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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE SEEN FAITH 
" / 

FRANK HAVEN HINMAN, 



PASTOK OP' 



CALVARY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



AUBURN, N. Y. 



AUTHOR OF 



HINTS AND HELPS FOR THE INQUIRY ROOM.' 



JANUARY I, 1891. 



ALBURN, X. V. 



MAY 13 1891 ;, 



Knapp, Peck & Thomson, Fkinteks. 

i8gi. 



^-^.^1 

\\^^ 



COPYRIGHTED BY 

FRANK HAVEN HINMAN. 

1891. 



DEDICATION. 

To Calvary Presbyterian Church with whom 
during the six years which have nearly passed 
since my exit from the Auburn Seminary my 
lot has been cast, I dedicate this little volume 
of discourses. I do this with the hope that it 
may be of some little comfort to those who 
desire their faith to be a faith which can be 
seen, and with the feeling that the same 
degree of charity which they have ever exer- 
cised toward me in my pulpit ministrations, 
will be exercised toward this booklet. 

Frank Haven Hinman. 
Auburn, N.Y., Jan. ist., 1891. 



CONTENTS. 

Sek.mon. Page. 

1. The Seen F.vith, - - 7 
II. The Unseen Univ^erse, _ - 25 
III. Growth in Christlikeness, - 42 
lY. Growth in Christi ikeness, - 60 
V. The Uplifted Christ, - - - 83 
VI. The Mission of Jesus, - - 102 
VII. Jesus, the Christ, - - - 113 
VIII. A Purpose in Life, - - 132 
IX. The Sacrifice Demanded by a Pur- 
pose, - - - - 157 
X. The Sacrifice Demanded by a Pur- 
pose, ----- 176 
XI. Manliness in Christlikeness. - 194 
XII. The Lowly Service, - - 213 

XIII. Jesus and the Resurrection, - 227 

XIV. A Vision of God, the Need of the 

Times, - - - - 244 

XV. The Ultimate Victory, - - 257 



THE SEEX FAITH. 

Text : — Luke 5: 20. " And when he saw their faith, he said unto 
him, man thy sins are forgiven thee." 

Theme : — Action : Faith that is seen. 

Action is the order of this universe. Iner- 
tia is an attribute of matter and yet matter is 
inert in its relation to some other matter. 
All matter is in motion. This universe is a 
universe of force. Even matter may be force 
knit together by God and waiting to be un- 
locked by his fiat. Matter is God's visible 
force. His action demonstrated. His mind 
incarnate in star and world and tree and 
wood and running brook The history of 
this world is the history of action ; of the 
correlation and conservation of force. His- 
tory opens its records with a declaration of 
definite action. *' In the beginning God cre- 
ated," and from that time on, the heavens 
and the earth have been declaring the glory 
of God. In the beginning God stamped 
tho't in matter and set it at work. It never 
gets tired. Nothing which moves in exact 
harmony does get tired. 



8 THE SEEN FAITH, 

While action is the order of this universe, 
it is directed action. This universe is not 
governed by blind force. Its action is not 
chaotic. It neither comes from chaos nor 
goes back to chaos. It is grand to study the 
directed action of this universe. To study 
it in astronomy and botany, biology and 
chemistry — action in the Heavens among the 
stars — action in the earth among vegetables 
and animals and minerals. It is grand to 
inspiration to study in geology the photo- 
graphed action of the ages past. Even in 
decay we find action still going on. It takes 
force to rot the leaf and decompose the body. 
Everything in God's creation outside of man 
seems to be busy. There are no lazy parti- 
cles in His universe. Everything seems to 
have its mission and to be in a hurry to fulfill 
it. There is no clashing in all this vast ar- 
rangement. All this action seems to be sym- 
metrical. All these agents seem to be work- 
ing together for some definite end and not 
against each other. We have been warned 
many times of the strange orbit of some 
wandering comet which has seemed about to 
dash itself against some star or world to the 
annihilation of itself or the star or both, but 



THE SEEN FAITH, 9 

when the time comes it passes by on its mis- 
sion without harm. There is something tre- 
mendous in all this action of these agents of 
God — so harmonious, so symmetrical, so 
plainly directed. 

All this action expresses thought. Mind in- 
carnate in matter. Mind in action and ex- 
pressed in that which is seen. Outward 
action expressed in material form is the sign 
of inward spiritual reality. This is the path- 
way to the heart of God. The heavens de 
clare his glory and the invisible things of 
Him are clearly seen, being read from the 
things which are made, even His eternal power 
and Godhead. 

As this universe in action reveals by its 
action the glory of God, so Jesus Christ 
in action reveals the Father. He was not a 
theory of God, but the action of God. He 
did not theorize ; He lived. His declaration 
was, My Father worketh hitherto and I work. 
He went about doing good. He made Him- 
self felt. Demosthenes is known for how he 
said things, Plato for what he said, Jesus for 
what He did. Action was the order of His 
life. He was the thought of God incarnate 
and in motion for a purpose. Harmoniously 



10 THE SEEN FAITH. 

symmetrically and actively He revealed the 
heart of God to the world of lost men. 

As the heavens declare the glory of God 
in action and as Jesus revealed the heart of 
God by his living, so should Christ's church 
on earth. Man is the only specimen of God's 
creation which can be said to be lazy. His 
great effort seems to be to get a vacation. 
To multiply holidays. To 'May off" from 
work. To lay up a competency so that he 
can rest. What fools we mortals are. I'he 
hardest kind of w^ork is prolonged rest. Half 
of our Sunday headaches are due to over 
sleep on Sunday morning. The wise of this 
world have found that rest consists in a change 
of work and not in inaction. A Garfield and 
Gladstone find the best rest in chopping 
down trees and translating the Iliad. The 
most tired out men one sees and the most 
tiresome are those who have nothing to do 
but to eat, drink and be merry. Rich tramps 
living on some body else's bread and butter. 
Heaven's rest is rest from wickedness and 
not from work. All the glimpses we get of 
Heaven through revelation, discloses a won- 
derously active condition of things. 

But no matter how lazy man may be by 



THE SEEN FAITH. 11 

nature, Christ's church on earth has no right 
to be lazy. Its order like that of the uni- 
verse is action. It was Christ's order to it. 
He said : "Let your light shine." "If you 
love me, you will keep, /. e. live, act out my 
commandments," " Not every one who saith 
Lord, Lord," /. e. who can con over the creed or 
the ritual, who makes a profession, — " but he 
that doeth the will of my Father." Pray that 
laborers be sent into the harvest field. Then 
in the text of this morning, we have the 
thought most clearly and beautifully ex- 
pressed : "And when he saw their faith." This 
is the finest sentence ever written to express 
just what true faith is. The faith that saves 
is the faith that is seen. Inward belief crys- 
talized m deed, manifested in action. It 
gives us the true idea of the relation of faith 
and works. Inward faith in the power of 
Christ to heal, caused the four men to bring 
their paralytic friend to Him to be healed. 
The bringing of the paralytic was the seen 
faith. If there had been no seen faith, there 
would have been no healing, no matter how 
much inward faith the four men might have 
expressed in the Saviour's power. The scrip- 
tural idea of faith is that of the inward belief 



12 THE SEEN FAITH. 

expressed in action. Action is what God 
wants on the part of his church and action 
there must be. It is not only faith, but right 
action He demands. But as Jesus came 
preaching. He emphasized the idea of faith. 
Certainly ! but simply and solely because 
faith is the fountain of action. Whoso truly 
believes will certainly act, and he will act as 
he believes. 

It is plain that both the church and the 
world do not comprehend clearly just what 
the faith of the scriptures is. We have it all 
confounded with mental assent. We believe 
something to be true. We believe Christ to 
be true, the Truth. We have some vague 
conception that that is all we are called upon 
to do. That our mental assent will save us. 
Thus we become lazy and inactive. That 
kind of faith is no faith at all, at least it is 
not the faith that saves. It differs from sav- 
ing faith by celestial diameters. The devils 
believe as far as that and tremble, but their 
belief does not lift them beyond the level of 
devils. P'aith that can not be seen is not the 
faith. The world of sceptics gets the same 
idea of faith. They imagine that mental as- 
sent to the power of Christ to save is all that 



THE SEEN FAITH, l8 

is required on the part of the scriptures to lift 
one from hell to Heaven. They can see no 
virtue in that kind of believing and they laugh 
and pass on. We commend the language of 
the text to both saint and sinner, to the church 
and to the sceptic. And when He saw their 
faith He worked the miracle. He did not 
act in the case until their faith had come to 
the surface, until it had been defined in out- 
ward action. We also commend a careful 
siudy of Christ's words to the doubting Philip, 
**' Believe me for the work's sake." 

It makes no difference what a man believes 
if he only acts rightly, but men act as they be- 
lieve and that is why great stress is laid on 
the idea of faith. 

But it is faith that justifies us? Certainly. 
Our works can not merit Heaven for us. God 
forgives those freely who believe on Hnn. But 
it is a belief that manifests itself in action. 
Faith without that is no faith. As an illustra- 
tion, see what this means when applied to the 
idea of repentence. Christ came preaching 
repentance and faith. Now what is repent- 
ance ? Sorrow of heart ? Sadness of counte- 
nance ? Tears? No. These may be attend- 
ent signs of repentance, but they are not re- 



14 THE SEEN FAITH. 

pentance. Repentance is nothing less than 
action ; that is, it is a change of mind that to 
become effectual must express itself in outward 
action. True repentance is not believing that 
Jesus Christ is the Son of (}od and that He 
has power to save. It is not such a sadness 
of countenance as to become visible. It does 
not consist in sackcloth and ashes and long 
drawn sighs. It is action. A turning away 
from sin. One who has truly repented has 
turned away from his previous life of wrong 
doing — has right-about faced. All other is 
simply sorrow of heart that worketh death. 
Judas was sorry and hung himself. True re- 
pentance never ends in self-destruction. Peter 
repented and left off cursing. Thus faith in 
repentance becomes a seen faith. All else is 
counterfeit. Isaiah defined repentance centu- 
ries before Christ came. He said, ''Let the 
wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous 
man his thought and let him return to our 
God." Repentance that is not seen is not re- 
pentance. The faith that only brings tears is 
not saving faith. Christ came to call men in- 
to action ; to deeds, not words. 

What is the true church on earth ? A rev- 
elation of the heart and mind of God to the 



THE SEEN FAITH. 15 

world. As the heavens and earth declare the 
glory of God's power, so the church declares 
the glory of God's holiness and love. These 
two, holiness and love ; and such a holiness 
and love as the angels behold on high in 
the being of God. This is the transcendently 
great mission of the church on earth. It is 
enough to produce great humility simply to 
contemplate the great purpose to which the 
church IS called. How shall the church de- 
clare it ? How do the heavens declare the 
glory of God ? Not by noise, but by motion. 
They are wonderfully silent but magnificently 
expressive. They are oppressively quiet, but 
swiftl.y active. The heavens have no creeds. 
They are the thoughts of God acted out The 
story of the heavens is the acts of the plane- 
tary system, just as the story of the early 
church is. The Acts of the Apostles. The 
heavens declare the glory of God by moving 
in accord with Divine law : the church is 
called upon to declare the glory of God by 
moving in accord with Divine law too. That 
is the how of it. The church will never per- 
form its mission by its professions nor by its 
creeds, but by its life. The church is not a 
library of dead languages. Its watch word is, 



16 THE SEEN FAITH. 

" I live," and not, "• I think." The church on 
earth is a small edition of the life of Heaven 
acted out here for the purpose of making the 
world of unsaved appreciate the glories which 
shall be revealed. God's living hand-bills to 
advertise the eternal drama. Specimens of 
God's handiwork set forth to attract the world 
to the moulding influences of his master-hand. 
The echoes of the Heavenly orchestra. In so 
far as the church on earth acts out the thought 
of God and lives over again the life of Christ, 
it will have power. The world will laugh at 
its opinions, cavel over its professions sneer 
at its hypocracies, but it will always stand in 
awe of its life if it be a true one. 

The history of the church should be the 
history of the correlation and conservation 
of the Divine force which was in Christ 
Jesus. Right action is what is demanded of 
the church. Action under the direction of 
God like that of the heavens. A faith that 
is seen. 

The religion of Jesus is not pantheistic. 
We are not called to an endless slumber in 
the bosom of the infinite. To the cessation 
of action. The church of God is not called 
to a folding of hands, to sloth, to negligence, 



THE SEEN FAITIE 17 

to idleness. It is not baptized into a spirit- 
ual competency on which to retire and take 
its ease. There are no summer resorts in 
God's serv'ice. God's buckets of salvation 
are never moss covered. No wonder Jesus 
honored the faith of those four men. He 
could see their faith. There is no better defi- 
nition of faith. The Christian faith is a faith 
which can be seen. A belief which produces 
action. AH else is spurious. A faith which 
does not reveal itself in definite action is not 
the faith of Christ. 

(i). The faith of the church to be the 
true faith must reveal itself in holy action 
and not in holy profession. Faith, without 
such holy action is dead being alone. It is 
hypocracy. It is the gospel of Jesus mumi- 
fied and a straw one at that. Godly living, 
Godly action, a holy faith, seen in every day 
life, is the order of the true Christian. The 
faith of the church to be the true faith not 
only must manifest itself in holy action but 
it will manifest itself in holy action. '* He 
that doeth righteousness is righteousness." 
If the church has the true faith, it will soon 
be discovered. The true Christian needs no 
placard on his back declaring : '^ I am a 



18 THE SEEN EAITIE 

Christian." By seeing his faith revealed in 
holy living, the world will understand he is 
saved. 

That life which is not consecrated to holy 
living is not of the house of faith. He may 
have the catechism well learned ; he may 
understand and love the ritual ; he may enjoy 
all that the form of ihings may bring him in 
religion exactly as he enjoys the theater 
where people play at living, where they mas- 
querade in the garments of every day life ; 
and still he may hear some day : " Depart 
from me I never knew you." The soul that 
on Jesus hath leaned, that has come into liv- 
ing contact with his life, has a determination 
that is invincible to work righteousness in 
every sphere of life. It has a constant im- 
pulse toward heavenly things. There may 
be mistakes, there may be occasional yield- 
ing to temptation, but it is not every day 
yielding, every day falling in the same pitfalls. 
There is a constant purpose, a constant en- 
deavor, a constant battle toward holy living. 
There is a constant advance. There is a 
growing in grace and in the knowledge of 
Jesus. More and more it is a theme of com- 
ment among men that that one has a growing 



THE SEEN FAITH. 10 

similarity of action with Him who spake as 
never man did before Him. More and more 
the world reads there the glory of the Father. 

By their actions we shall know them. By 
their seen faith we shall be enabled to place 
them where they belong. You can tell them 
in business life by their rigid honesty. The 
Christian never steals. He does not cheat. 
He does not lie. He does not over-reach his 
accounts. He has a square balance sheet. 
He gives gallon for gallon, yard for yard, 
pound for pound. You can tell the true 
Christian in every sphere of life, not by their 
church membership, but by their living. 
They are the very incarnation of the ten 
commandments as interpreted by Jesus in the 
sermon on the mount. It is not the ** Lord, 
Lord," of the ritualist, nor the profession of 
any, nor their church membership that reveals 
their relationship to God or the devil, but 
their faith, working itself out in holy action, 
seen in holy lives. 

(2). The faith of the church to be the 
true faith must go farther than simple holy 
action. By this it does not reveal the Father's 
heart. It must and it will reveal itself in 
loving action. The Christian will reveal not 



20 THE SEEN FAITH, 

only God's holiness, but God's love. He 
must be holiness incarnate, but he must also 
be love incarnate. Here is his greatest dis- 
tinction which marks him from the world. 
Professedly, the Christian loves his brother. 
He sympathizes in love with all defective 
humanity. He has charity for all men. His 
great mission in this world is to be helpful to 
all. His life is that of the good Samaritan. 
He loves to run on errands of mercy. He 
delights to sacrifice for the household of 
faith. He calls every man his brother. He 
suffers long and is kind. He thinks no evil. 
His life is a living sacrifice for his Master. 
All this is not irksome, for it is love which 
drives his chariot wheels. This is his profes- 
sion. What is his action ? The world under- 
stands that the Christian professes this. It 
understands, too, that the Christian is sup- 
posed to act over again the life of Jesus when 
on earth. But when it sees brother going to 
law with brother ! harsh and cold criticism of 
the defects of others. Christian brethren 
passing each other on the street without 
speaking through hatred ; the cruel and im- 
aginative evil-thinking of others ; the cold 
shoulder given to the stranger at church ; 
the wounded by the wayside and priest and 



THE SEEN FAITH. 21 

Levite passing by ; the unchurched masses 
and no hand outstretched to save them ; he 
looks hither and thither and yon for action 
that corresponds with the profession, a life 
that exemplifies the faith, doing that distin- 
guishes the Christian from the man of the 
world ; he sees none ; he hisses out, " Hypo- 
crite," says Christianity is a failure, Christ a 
myth, and life a failure too, and his scepti- 
cism is sealed. Who can blame him ? I say 
it boldly that we are a mass of hypocrites un- 
less we out-run the world, not only in our 
holiness of living, but in our active love for 
the world of the lost, our sympathy for de- 
fective humanity, our charity for the weak- 
nesses of the brethren, our helpfulness toward 
the helpless. Christianity means sympathetic, 
self-sacrificing, loving service. It means a 
faith that is seen not only in righteousness, 
(oh, how many there are who seem to think 
that Christianity is all summed up in right- 
eousness), but in loving helpfulness of the 
world's paralyzed, in such determined sympa- 
thetic service as manifests itself in carrying 
the sick one to the home of Jesus, in the tear- 
ing up of the tileing, in the letting of him 
down at the Savior's side. In no other way 
can the church fulfill its mission and reveal 



23 THE SEEN FAITH. 

in action the glory of the Father. In no 
other way does it live over again the life of 
Christ. 

Brethren, the time has come when if we 
would win the world to Christ, we have got to 
win it by right action. The day has gone by 
when men can be won by statement of creed 
or nominal profession The majority will 
never be won by correctly stated philosophy. 
This age is too practical for that. The great 
question today is, will it work. We must man- 
ifest our principles by our lives or our cause 
will fail. We must make our inward faith a 
seen faith or it is useless. We must not forget 
to emphasize faith just the same. Outward 
action is but the sign of inward condition. A 
seen faith the sign of the unseen. If we have 
the right action there must be the inward prin 
ciple. On the contrary if there be no correct 
outward action, there is no correct inward prin- 
ciple, or faith. If our lives do not exemplify 
the life of Jesus we have not the true faith and 
we are none of his. Holy action : acts of lov- 
ing sympathy. 

Paul was correct in writing his epistle to the 
Romans to emphasize the idea of faith. He 
was driving at the inward condition. He was 
endeavoring to get the heart right. That is 



THE SEEN FAITH. 23 

the starting point. Outward action without 
inward condition is hypocracy. But James 
was just as correct in writing his epistle to em- 
phasize the idea of works ; of emphasing the 
seen faith where Paul did the unseen. James 
says that it makes no difference how much you 
claim, but how much you do. That your faith 
will be seen in your w^orks or else it is no faith 
at all. P'aith to be the true faith must be the 
seen faith. This is what our Lord taught. 
Some will go right on saying, '^ Lord, Lord," 
while hungry souls are starving, thirsty ones 
are dying, imprisoned ones are languishing, 
helpless ones have no support, weak ones are 
growing weaker in despair, while there are 
none to sympathize and lay a strong hand be- 
neath them for support. But such formalists, 
such empty hulks of attempt, such shadows of 
something, such brazen hypocracies, are 
doomed some day to hear, " In as much as ye 
did it not to the least of these ye did it not to 
me." '' Depart from me." Brethren, if you 
are going to continue in the Master's service, 
if you \\\\\ still cry, " Lord, Lord," if you will 
still represent your Lord on this earth you 
must quit your meanness, stop your deviltry, 
leave off your sinning, and expend your en- 
ergy not in saying but in doing, not in pro- 



24 THE SEEN FAITH. 

fession nor in creed, but in holy, self sacrific- 
ing, sympathetic service. Ye are God's creed- 
Thy theories perish with thee. We are revis- 
ing creeds, why not revise our lives ? Chris- 
tianity means something. It means right 
action tow^ard God and toward men in the 
name of Jesus. 

Action is the expression of the soul. It is 
mind revealed ; inward principle coming to 
the surface ; theories verified or unmasked ; 
a soul seen. By their fruits ye shall know 
them. Action purifies. The running brook 
carries the pure water. Action is the sign of 
genius. A wise mother pasted on my looking 
glass when a boy this saying, '* The only differ- 
ence between man and man is energy." I 
never could shake off the idea. I can see its 
truth today af(er twelve years of public life. 
The great difference between men is seen in 
action which defines their inward faith. 

Friend, we have had enough of your precept 
in regard to Christianity, make yourself an 
example of your precept. May God arouse 
us all into greater action until it shall be writ- 
ten of us as it has been of the early church, 
that it went everywhere doing good. The 
world will stand in awe of the church on fire 
with holy loving energy ; a faith that is seen. 



THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE. 

Text: — II Cor. IV:i8. "For the things which are seen are 
temporal ; but the things which are not seen are eternal." 

To many of us the unseen universe is 
either an unreality, or far off both in space 
and time. We go out at night and weary the 
heavens with our searching to find some 
center at which the universe may be balanced, 
that there we may locate the throne of God. 
We sit by our firesides and looking at the 
vacant chair, think of the loved ones who 
have gone before and vaguely wish for that 
far off time of the resurrection to hasten that 
the unseen may become the seen, the unreal, 
the real. 

God is not there. He is here. The center 
of this universe for us is not yonder, but just 
at that point where our soul touches the 
infinite. The soul that is centered in God is 
at the heart of the universe. The eye which 
sees Him is not the eye of a telescope which 
might pierce the utmost recesses of this crea- 
tion, but the eye of faith which looks down at 
the very foundation pf our being and sees 



26 TFIE SEEN FAITH. 

where the soul touches the omnipresent God. 
The universe for that soul is centered there 
and it need look no farther to find Him. The 
holy of holies for us is the inmost chamber of 
our being, and there on the mercy seat of our 
heart, beneath the outstretched wings of hope 
and love, God sits, revealing Himself to those 
who look for His appearing. And the unseen 
universe is not yet to come ; it has come 
already. It is near us. It billows around us 
more intimately than the sunlight. Heaven 
is at our elbow. The ministering spirits of 
God are never far from us. His angels linger 
in our Gethsemanes to strengthen us in our 
affliction. His twelve legions of attendants 
are ready to do our bidding. It takes no 
speaking trumpet to make Heaven hear us. 
Jacob saw the angels ascending and descend- 
ing. They had to go up his ladder first 
before they could come down it. While the 
disciples were gazing into the heavens the 
angels touched them on the earth. 

God and Heaven are not yonder, they are 
here. They are not yet to come, they have 
come. 

This is the meaning of our text, so often 
abused by making Paul seem' to say, '' the 



THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE, 27 

things which you see now are some day to 
fade away, but the things which will last for- 
ever are coming bye-and bye. Keep your eyes 
on the coming events which are eternal." 

Paul said nothing of the kind. He is 
writing to those in affliction. He desires to 
give them courage in the crucible of their 
testing. He says there is an inward man and 
there is an outward man, and while the out- 
ward man may suffer and perish, the inward 
man, the man that is noiu within, is renewed 
day by day. And this affliction worketh 
through the outward man upon the inward 
man. While the outward man grows faded 
and soiled and worn and crooked and old and 
distorted and wrinkled through suffering, the 
inward man grows beautiful and pure and 
perfect through the same process. While 
we look not at the things which are seen but 
at ; (notice this word at ; Paul does not speak 
as though they were in the future yet ; ) but 
at the things which now exist, but are not 
seen. And then he makes the general asser- 
tion of the text, which applies not only to 
the inward man but to the entire unseen 
world as well. ^'P'or the things which are seen 
are temporal ; " this outward garb of things 



28 THE SEEN FAITH. 

shall some day cease to exist. '' But the things 
which are not seen," by the physical eye, " are 
eternal." 

There are two general assertions made in 
the text, (i.) The things which we appre- 
hend with the physical organs of sense 
are to pass away forever. (2.) The things 
which the physical organs of sense can 
not behold or touch, or taste, but which 
now are only seen by faith, are not only 
now existing, but they shall exist forever 
more. Paul affirms the fading character of 
things that are seen, but he affirms likewise 
the present reality and the everlasting char- 
acter of the things which are not seen. He 
puts two states over and against each other 
as equally existing in the present time. Of 
one he says there shall be an end ; of the 
other that there shall be no end. The seen 
world he contrasts with the unseen, and of 
these he says that the seen world and the 
unseen world are both here now, but that the 
spiritual world alone shall endure forever. 

In this way Paul would lead the Corinthian 
church to assign correct values to the seen 
and the unseen by putting the perishable by 
the side of the imperishable, the temporal 
by the side of the everlasting. 



THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE. 29 

There are two facts that I desire to impress 
upon you today for the same purpose and 
other purposes than that for which Paul 
impressed them on the Corinthians. 

1. The present reality of the unseen. 

2. Its eternal duration. 

In support of these statements, I would 
have you notice : 

I. The fact that the unseen world is here 
now, as a reality, and that it shall never cease 
to be, in contra-distinction to the universe 
which our physical senses apprehend and 
which is to perish, is in exact accord with the 
modern teaching of science and philosophy 
and marvelously so. 

II. That they are in accord with the 
great minds expressed through the great liter- 
ature of all ages. 

III. That they are in accord with the testi- 
mony of observation and self-consciousness. 

IV. That they are supported by the trend 
of all scripture teaching. 

We are fast leaving behind us a material- 
istic age ; we are rapidly approaching a 
spiritual age. The men prominent in the 
world of scholarship w'ho hold a materialistic 
conception of creation, are few indeed, The 



30 THE SEEN FAITH, 

trend of thought outside of theological cir- 
cles is toward the spiritual conception of 
things. It is only a few years since men 
were attempting to account for the existence 
of creation, without the aid of any mental or 
moral power behind it. Then they were 
dredging the sea for a middle somewhat, 
which might bridge the chasm between mind 
and matter. They were trying to formulate 
life by putting together the proper substances 
in the proper proportions necessary to make 
an ^g% which would produce life, but while 
they could fool the natural eye, they could 
not fool nature and no winged or unwinged 
bird ever came from such an undertaking. 
Men who have been searching land an 1 sea 
and endeavoring to find through inventive 
mind the source of life without postulating 
the spiritual world, the unseen universe, have 
ceased for the most part this procedure. They 
have found that while they might be called 
the discoverers of certain sources and pro- 
cesses of life, they were not inventors of that 
life. The Columbus of science has at last 
come to the conclusion that to discover a 
continent does not mean to create it and that 
one must search deeper than the forms of 



THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE. 31 

things to find the power that fashions and to 
which the form of things is only conformed. 
Science has come to the conclusion that there 
is a power back of all things seen. That 
there is a God behind the scenes who shifts 
the scenery of the seen to accommodate His 
conception of things and to unfold His mind 
and will. That the natural universe is but 
the garment of the spiritual universe^ the 
seen the cloak of the unseen. 

And not alone that God is, and that He is 
the power that moulds and fashions the 
changing forms of things but that He is 
very, very near us, just behind his creation, 
just within the vail of flesh and matter. 
That the throbbing of life in plant and ani- 
mal and man is God manifesting Himself to 
the eyes of man. That the continuity of 
law which seems to govern things seen is but 
the continuous movements of God in har- 
mony with His own unchanging nature. 
Science is actually getting devout and is 
learning to touch with reverence every grain 
of sand as though God were within, and to 
gaze through microscope and telescope with 
bated breath as though about to approach 
the chamber of the holiest place where God 



32 THE SEEN FAITH. 

dwells. This devout and reverential attitude 
of science is very noticeable to one who can 
read the signs of the times. It begins to 
look as though we would find ourselves soon 
face to face with the infinite God and the 
unseen universe in a way we have little 
thought. That suddenly we were to become 
conscious that the Bible is true when it speaks 
of the omnipresent God and His Christ as 
the Holy Ghost, near us at every hour. That 
He would soon burst through this ihin vail 
of outward form of things and we would 
find ourselves at once face to face with the 
unseen and with Him for whom we have 
searched the heavens so long. 

And then we have learned to look upon the 
seen universe which we have thought so 
stable, so firm, so everlasting, as after all 
fleeting, fickle, changeable, uncertain, insecure 
and some day surely to come to an end. 

These bodies of ours which we once thought 
the best part and the only part of us, we 
realize today are changing continually. They 
are not today as they were yesterday. They 
are entirely different than they were the day 
before. But what has moulded and shapen 
the new matter which has come to make up 



1 



THE UXSEEX V XI VERSE. 33 

the new face to the same old features ? Why 
is the form the same totiay in its identity as 
that of twenty years ago ? The seen world 
has been moulded by the unseen and it has 
been conformed to the spirit it has enfolded. 

So it is with the heavens above us and the 
earth beneath. The astronomer can almost 
figure out to the day when the material uni- 
verse shall disappear, when the unseen world 
shall pass away as it now exists. Only this 
last week we have seen the calculations which 
are based upon the observations of two cen- 
turies that the constellation Ursus ^[ajor, 
was once in the form of a cross, and that bye- 
and-bye, it will take to itself an entirely new 
form in the heavens. 

All testimony is converging to this point 
this hour, that the seen universe is the chang- 
ing and the temporal : but that there is an 
unseen universe which is enduring and ever- 
lasting. That the unseen world is all around 
us now and only just within the vail of flesh 
and matter. Surely the things which are seen 
are temporal, bur the things which are unseen 
are eternal. While the seen heavens and earth 
shall pass away, there is an unseen heaven 
and earth which shall never pass away. 



34 THE SEEN FAlTH. 

The great minds of the centuries seem 
always to move as though in the presence of 
the unseen. Goethe writes in the sublimest 
little poem ot modern times : 

" Here eyes do regard you 
In eternities' stillness." 

Victor Hugo wrote his Les Miserables, as 
he says, as a drama the leading personage of 
which is the infinite. It was a study of God's 
movements among men, of God revealing 
Himself through men. And in one place 
Hugo exclaims : "" What a contemplation for 
mind, and what endless food for thought, is 
the reverberation of God upon the human 
wall." 

The material heavens are but the black- 
board where God spells out His mind to 
accommodate the infant mind of man. Kep- 
ler exclaims after searching the stars and con- 
stellations, " O, God, I think Thy thoughts 
after Thee." History to the mind of genius 
is only God's foot-prints in the sands of time. 

And where is the soul that is not conscious 
at times of the presence of God and of the 
unseen ^. We all meet God occasionally face 
to face. There is a Jacob's ladder and vision 
for every soul. God blazes out from many a 



THE UN SEEM UNIVERSE. 35 

bush of fire to all His children, until there is 
not a child of Adam but what is conscious 
thai the unseen is not only real but very near. 
God walks in every garden at the cool of day 
or in the midday heat or evening's solitude. 
The ancients saw many gods in every star, 
and sun and moon and cloud and mountain 
and plain and river and sea, while the very 
atmosphere was quivering with the spirits of 
the departed. We are learning to see not 
many gods, but the one God, wise, eternal 
and omnipresent, though as yet invisible, yet 
speaking to His children, through every rock 
and rill and river, through every sun and storm 
and sea, through every cloud and constellation 
and conscience, telling us of an unseen uni- 
verse that lies around us and of which the 
inward man, our very self, form an essen- 
tial part. An unseen universe which we 
behold now as in a glass darkly, but soon 
face to face ; of which now we know but in 
part, but soon even as we are known. An 
unseen universe which shall abide forever, for 
the things which are seen are temporal, but 
the things which are not seen are eternal. 
And from the atmosphere around us quiver- 
ing with the beating of wings of saint and 



36 THE SEEN EAITH. 

angel and seraphim, comes the response of 
the Heavenly chorus, saying Amen and Amen. 

As we look into the scriptures for testimony 
we see that from first to last it is the move- 
ment of the infinite and unseen, working 
itself out to the material perception of the 
physical organs of sense, and then appearing 
through the seen to the unseen and spiritual 
man within. God walks with majestic treads 
through the pages of the Book. He is recog- 
nized therein as Sovereign and Omnipresent. 
To the Testament writers. Heaven is at hand 
and God and the angels are daily compan- 
ions The real therein is that which under- 
lies and overlies and lies through all creation. 
There we are led to understand that some 
day the physical and seen universe shall melt 
with fervent heat, a thought these days taught 
by science, while the realm of the spiritual 
and imperishable shall revel in new glories. 
There we are taught that Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but that the spiritual world 
shall endure forever. 

This conception of things is what redeemed 
the nations of Jews and kept the fathers 
faithful. They endured as seeing Him who 
is invisible. This accounts for the wonder- 



TFiE UNSEEN UNIVERSE. 87 

ful movement and underlying energy of the 
prophets, priests, kings and laymen of God's 
chosen They did not put so much stress 
upon the seen universe as upon the unseen. 
And they did not put this unseen universe as 
way off in the future of time and space. 
They seldom stop to ask where Heaven is, 
for Heaven to them is all around them. Then 
when the Great Teacher came, when He saw 
a tendency among the school men to study 
times and seasons, to seek after signs and to 
put Heaven as yonder and not here. He said, 
'' The kingdom of Heaven is within," literally 
among ''you." 

God is the daily companion of the Hebrew 
heroes and Heaven is their continual experi- 
ence. Enoch walked with God over three 
hundred years. Moses had God continually 
round about him. The prophet was aston- 
ished that his attendant, though a young man, 
was frightened and asked the Lord to show 
him that the band of five hundred gathered 
against those two could not harm them, and 
lo, his eyes were opened and he saw the hills 
around them and the valleys full of horses 
and chariots of fire. 

Pavid hears the sounds of the unseen army 



38 THE SEEN FAITH, 

in the mulberry trees. The angels go down 
into the lions' den with Daniel. The disci- 
ples suddenly find on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration Moses and Elias, not dead but alive 
and glorified. 

Paul sees continually around him the spirits 
of just men made perfect, and, conscious of 
this, he is made eager to run his race for the 
prize. 

The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, 
tells us of the ministering spirits sent forth 
to minister to the heirs of the covenant. And 
then he peoples the amphitheater of earth 
with all the worthies of the past and amid 
their cheerings and hallelujahs bids us run 
with patience the race set before us. When 
the authorities of earth banished the saintly 
John to the lonely and barren rocks of Pat- 
mos, thinking to drive from his mind his 
spiritual and religious conceptions of things, 
by the loneliness of the companionship of 
the sands and rocks and the restless sea, 
John peoples with spiritual vision the whole 
island with the new Heavens and the new 
Earth as the old universe and the seen is 
rolled together as a scroll. And out from the 
recesses of the rocks and up frona the sea- 



THE U/VSEEJV UNI VERSE. 39 

kissed sands and off from the crest of the 
waves and on the wings of the winds, in the 
air and on the earth and over the waters he 
hears the songs of triumph of those of the 
past and the present and the future, of angel 
and redeemed, mingled with the voice of Him 
who sits on the throne. Is John lonely ? 
Ask the book of Revelation. There is no 
loneliness for a Christian who understands 
that the unseen is not to come, but that it 
is here. That the unseen universe is not 
yonder, but here now and lying just within 
the shadow cast by earth's sins, waiting to 
be revealed. 

Thus from every side of us this very hour 
is converging the testimony of science, of 
genius, of self-consciousness in harmony 
with the Book of books, testifying to the 
present realit}^ of the unseen universe, its 
continuity and its eternal character and like- 
wise the fading character, of that which is 
now seen, the material universe which our 
material eyes behold. As we cry out today, 
'' Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence," these voices 
unite in the response chanted by the Hebrew 
church centuries ago, saying : 



40 THE SEEN FAITH. 

^' If we ascend up into Heaven, thou art 
there ; if we make our bed in hell, behold 
thou art there. If we take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of 
the sea, even there shall thy hand lead us and 
thy right hand shall hold us. If we say, 
surely the darkness shall cover us, even the 
night shall be light about us. Yea, the dark- 
ness hideth not from thee." ^' Surely these 
things which are seen are temporal, but thou 
and the unseen universe are eternal." 

And now allowing our theme to be true 
and borne out by the evidence given, what 
shall we say ? What bearing has all this upon 
our daily life ? How can we make it practi- 
cal ; this thought that that which is unseen, 
our inner selves, God and the universe of 
spirit, is true and imperishable, while these 
bodies, the material world, the seen universe 
is soon to come to an end ; this text of St. 
Paul, ^' For the things which are seen are 
temporal but the things which are not seen 
are eternal ?" 

I. Put correct values to both the material 
and spiritual universe in harmony with their 
character and their duration. The spiritual is : 



THE UNSEE/V UNIVERSE. 41 

(i.) The cause of the seen and cause of 
the form of things. 

(2.) It endures forever. 

The material is : 

(i.) Only the passive instrument played 
upon. 

(2.) It is some day to pass away. 

2. Therefore give the due attention to 
things that are spiritual and which pertain to 
the development of your inner man, to take 
part in the never ending universe of the now 
unseen. 

3. Live ever as in the presence of the 
unseen. 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 

Text:— II Cor. 3:18. " But we all, with open face beholding 
as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord." 

Theme : — Growth in Christlikeness. 

From the cradle to the grave, man is as 
restless as the sea. He is ever seeking rest and 
seemingly never finding it. Like the man of 
Ecclesiastes he rushes on from one point to 
another, looking this way and that, but 
without finding that for which he is looking. 
Like Wilheim Meister in his travels, he seems 
under bonds never to stay three days in a 
place, and never to walk over three days with 
the same companion. Nothing gives him 
permanent rest or lasting satisfaction. He 
climbs to certain heights of fame along one 
of the many lines of earth's activities, only 
to find his heart still lonely and as dissatisfied 
as ever he rushes onward ever onward, 
higher ever higher, driven by the irresistless 
force of his own dissatisfied heart, only to 
find as the last height is reached, if indeed 
he ever can reach it, himself, with eyes full 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS, 43 

of tears, weeping for other heights to scale 
and other worlds to conquer. Then, looking 
at the mighty mass of struggling humanity 
beneath him, he wishes he had staid with 
them, for the height to which he has climbed 
has failed to satisfy him, it has only intensi- 
fied his longing, while his very eminence has 
given him loneliness in exchange for earth's 
companionship. 

Who can fathom the debts of the hungry, 
dissatisfied and lonely heart ? Where can 
food and companionship be found which 
shall satisfy it, giving fullness for hunger, 
rest for restlessness, companionship for lone- 
liness ? From the grave of the centuries 
comes the wail of nescience, founded on the 
experience of world-wide generations, saying, 
*^ we know not." 

Is not this restlessness of the human heart 
under every environment which man can dis- 
cover among the possibilites of earth, a suffi- 
cient testimony that something beyond and 
above the human soul, and above this earth, 
must be found as its satisfying food, its soul 
nourishing portion ? Where then shall rest 
and food and companionship be found, which 
shall fill the empty heart ? Listen ! A voice 



44 THE iEEN FAITH. 

of the past comes to us, and yet not only a 
voice which was, but one which is, and is to 
come, for from everlasting to everlasting it is 
sounding forth saying, '' Come unto me and 
ye shall find rest for your souls." '* My 
Father giveth you the true bread from 
heaven." " I am the bread of life ; he that 
cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he 
that believeth on me shall never thirst." " I 
will be with thee alway." This is the voice 
of Jesus, the Christ, and in Him, and only in 
Him, will ultimate rest be exchanged for 
restlessness, satisfaction for dissatisfaction 
and disappointment, and eternal companion- 
ship for loneliness. I shall be satisfied and 
only satisfied when I awake in His likeness. 
Whether the human heart knows it or not, 
rest and satisfaction will only be found in 
Christlikeness ! I repeat it. Whether the 
human heart knows it or not, rest and satis- 
faction will be found and only found in 
Christlikeness. O, hungry, restless, lonely 
heart take notice ! 

With a just conception of what Christlike- 
ness means, well may the heart of man grow 
faint at the thought of climbing to such a 
wonderful height. One might be charged 



Gk IV Til IN CHRIS TIIKENE SS. 45 

with supreme audacity in attempting to reach 
it, say nothing about any expectancy of 
reaching it. Looking up through the blue 
vault of heaven and seeing Jesus at the right 
hand of the Father exalted ; seeing the 
exceeding brightness of his glorified image ; 
the perfection of beauty stamped in every 
line of his matchless form and visage, and 
then realizing by very contrast how ugly 
these forms of earth, shall we not the rather 
cry out, " Woe is me for I am undone," than 
to expect to some day be like Him ? 

If rest and satisfaction be only found in 
attaining that image shall we not give up 
in dispair? No! a thousand times, no! 
Though in struggling toward it we have 
fallen a thousand times, no ! Up, and on ! 
" Here eyes do regard you in eternities' still- 
ness ; here is all fullness ye brave to reward 
you ; work and dispair not." Our text, in 
harmony Avith the entire teaching of the word, 
informs us that Christlikeness is possible, and 
it points out the pathway. To that pathway 
I would call your attention. 

First, the text teaches us, that, by behold- 
ing, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord we 
are changed into the same image. Not a 



46 THE SEEN FAITH, 

very difficult process here outlined. Not a 
very difficult route, though a long one, 
pointed out by that apostle who had most to 
say about conformity to that image. Behold- 
ing, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord. 
Not seeing the fullness of the glory of Christ ; 
the eyes of man are not of sufficient strength 
to behold such glory ; but looking at the 
glory reflected from the glass. Getting it 
second-hand. Not standing gazing up into 
heaven, but looking, at the glass, which God 
has given us, and with that light in its mellow 
softness streaming upon us and billowing 
around us, finding ourselves being changed 
into the same image whose glory we see 
reflected. If the reflected glory of the Lord 
will work this transformation what would not 
the transcendent glory of His unreflected 
image do ? But, like some plants which can 
not stand the fullness of the sun's shining in 
their nursery days without stunting their 
growth, we must stand for a time within the 
shadow and watch the glass, until we shall 
be strong enough to see the Son of man in 
the fullness of his glory. 

Notice the simplicity and the ease of our 
part in this transformation. We are to look 



GROWTH IN CIIRISTLIKENESS. 47 

at the glass which reflects the glory, and that 
is all. The majority of the human race will 
not be satisfied with this. Nay, the majority 
in the church will not be satisfied with this. 
The world before conversion and the church 
after conversion is forever crying out, ^' What 
must I do that I may inherit eternal life ?" 
Jesus and Paul are answering, '' Believe and 
Behold." Believe on Jesus and be saved ; 
behold the glory of Jesus and be trans- 
formed. What a wonderful way ! What a 
blessed way ! What an easy way ' What a- 
glorious way ! Believe and behold. Resting 
in Jesus and resting now, is His way. It is 
man's way to fret and stew and work and try 
and endeavor, it is God's way to rest. Weary 
soul striving to enter in, not knowing you are 
in, not knowing that you are already through 
the gate that is straight and in the narrow 
way, just cease your strife and behold the 
glory of your Master, even Jesus. Not by 
fretting and struggling and striving now you 
are in the narrow way, but by beholding are 
you to be transformed. It is to you, who are 
laboring and who are burdened with your 
labours, that Jesus says, " come." /\nd He 
did not say come and I will teach you how 



48 THE SEEN FAITH. 

to strive, but "' Come and I will give you 
rest." 

Notice again, that which we are to behold. 
It may be well to emphasize before we go 
farther, that, there is no beholding the glory 
of the Lord unless our eyes have first been 
opened by regeneration at conversion. The 
sightless eyeballs of the man of the world 
can never see the glory of the Lord. This 
is that spiritual thing, which is spiritually 
discerned. He is blind and it is not to be 
wondered that he does not behold any glory 
although he may look at the glass. Paul is 
speaking to those who have had the veil of 
the natural man taken away. If you want 
to see this glory and be transformed into that 
heavenly image, my brother, you must be 
born again, otherwise you cannot see God nor 
his kingdom. But those who. have had their 
eyes opened are to behold the glory of the 
Lord. The glory of the Lord as seen in 
creation, and no one can fully appreciate 
God's glory even as it is manifested in crea- 
tion without first having his eyes opened 
How many thousands will testify that they 
never had seen this world's beauty nor the 
beauty of the physicial universe until they 



GRO W TH IN CHRIS TLIKENE SS, 40 

had been born again. But especially do we 
mean the glory of the Lord as seen in the 
work of redemption. Every thing which 
led up to that work, culminating in the life, 
death and resurrection of Jesus. Seeing the 
glory of His love In giving Himself to die 
for us. Seeing the glory of His compassion 
and motherly sympathy as He sheds tears 
for the suffering and touches diseased and 
dying bodies to new life. Seeing the glory 
of His self-sacrifice as weary and tired He 
still goes about doing good. Seeing the 
glory ot His forbearance as under base pro 
vocation He opens not his mouth. Seeing 
the glory of his forgiveness when, dying at 
the hands of His enemies, He cries out, 
*' Father forgive them, they know not what 
they do." Seeing the glory of that matchless 
life which knew no sin, though in the midst 
of a sinful world. Seeing the glory of His 
triumph as He bursts the bands of the tomb, 
rises triumphant over death and ascends to 
the Father. 

Then, we are to see ihe glory of the Lord 
as manifested in his providential care for us. 
Keeping us in His pavilion ; hidmg us 
beneath His feathers ; sheltering us beneath 



50 THE SEEN FAITH, 

his wings ; giving His angels charge over us 
to keep us in His ways ; making all things to 
work together for our good ; giving us food, 
shelter, clothing and loved ones, and causing 
even the wrath of men and our every afflic- 
tion to work out for us a far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory. 

We are to see the glory of the Lord in 
history, especially the history of the church. 
We are to see it as revealed in His word, 
as manifested in the salvation of the sou)s 
around us ; in the transformation of their 
lives. We are to see it, when in our secret 
chamber, in communion with Him, he reveals 
Himself to our spiritual vision in inexpressi- 
ble splendor. In short we are to behold His 
glory wherever He has revealed it. If we 
are watchful we shall see that reflected glory 
by day and by night, sometimes in the pillar 
of fire, sometimes in the cloud, but we shall 
see it ever if we look His way, and seeing it 
we shall be transformed. 

Is not this the natural way, this being 
transformed by beholding, into the image of 
that which we behold ? How else does one 
grow in sin ? One does not try to grow into 
the image of Satan. Surround the boy with 



GROWTH IN CIIRISTLIKENESS, 51 

the reflected image of sin. Let him behold 
it in the pictures on the wall, the books he 
reads, the language he hears, the lives he 
sees lived ; let his whole young life have a 
Godless environment, and lo, from this 
reflected image of the devil, without effort, 
he grows more and more like the image until 
the transformation becomes complete. Not 
much of effort here. Whoever heard any 
one say in the morning, ^* I am going to try 
to be sinful today ?" A sinful living comes 
most naturally to the natural heart, without 
any effort, and sinful transformation of soul 
fiber is accomplished most perfectly by sim- 
ply beholding as in a glass the image of the 
devil. But do you say you sin without trying, 
but you can not be good without trying ? it is 
most natural to sin but to do right is not 
natural ? But has the natural heart not been 
changed in regeneration, and has there not 
been placed within us divine impulses toward 
right and God ? Is not our life now lived by 
letting these divine impulses work out of us 
most naturally while we are beholding as in a 
glass the glory of the Lord ? Does not the 
whole of our warfare now consist in keeping 
the glass before us, and beholding the image ? 



52 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Is not this the best way to resist temptation 
and fly from the devil and to watch lest we 
sm ? It seems to be the gospel way, and 
Paul's way. Teach that boy of yours, my 
brother, to look at the reflected image of the 
Christ ; see that all the glass he sees is the 
one in which that image is reflected. That 
in the pictures he beholds, the books he 
reads, the companions he loves, the lives he 
sees lived, he gets a glimpse of nothing but 
the image of Jesus. Teach him to look for 
that image in prayer and in the reading of 
the Book ! Then you may rest assured that 
he will be transformed into that same image, 
and for him to do right will come as natural 
as to do wrong comes to the natural heart. 

Friend, we are changed into the image of 
Jesus the Christ by beholding as in a glass the 
glory revealed. The reason why the trans- 
formation does not take place more rapidly 
and more perceptibly is, that we are not 
keeping that glass before us, and if the glass 
is near us, it is lying unused. Lift up the 
glass and look. The glory of Heaven will 
come streaming over you and you will see 
that image, which seeing, you must love and 
into which loving, you will be changed. 



GRO IV TH IN CHRIS TLIKENESS. 53 

Secondly, the text teaches us, that this 
transformation into the image of the Lord, is 
a gradual transformation. We are changed 
from glory to glory. While beholding the 
glory of the Lord we are changed from one 
degree of glory to another degree of glory, 
until'finally, our image shall mirror, most per- 
fectly, the glorious image of the Loid. This 
is a truth most restful. As we behold the 
revelation of the perfect image, there springs 
up within us a longing desire to be like that. 
That desire is like the desire of youth, looking 
toward manhood. Who has not felt in his 
childhood days at times, the longing to be 
full grown ? How the hot blood coursed 
impatiently thro* our young veins as we look- 
ed way off to the rugged peaks of a complete 
physical stature. How cur young nerves 
trembled as we longed with unutterable long- 
ing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the 
father or the mother. But in spite of our 
longings we went from glory to glory in arriv- 
ing at our physical destination: from strength 
to strength. There was no other way. It 
did not do us any good to fret and worry and 
try to grow. All this fretting and worrying 
and trying to take great leaps toward the 



54 THE SEEN FAITH, 

desired goal only used up energy uselessly, 
and kept us so much the longer on the road. 
In our patience we possessed our physical 
stature. Just so is the growth into the image 
of the Lord. There is no leaping toward that 
image. We are to undergo transformation 
from strength to strength. Fret and worry 
and try as you may, the image-likeness will 
come only just so fast. In our looking and 
in our patience will we possess our spiritual 
stature. I say this is a truth most restful, if 
we will only hearken. Looking into the glass 
we see not only the glory of the divine image, 
but we see the uglmess of our own image. 
If we expect to see an immediate change and 
it fails us we shall be disappointed, and dis- 
couraged, turn away. But if we understand 
fully, that it is not only God's way with our 
physical and mental natures to lead us under 
proper surroundings from strength to strength, 
but it is his way also with our spiritual natures, 
we shall keep looking and believing and keep 
growing until scarcely noticed by us we shall 
begin ourselves to reflect his glory, and the 
final consummation will be faces illumined with 
heavenly light, smitten through and through 
with the divine glory. In your patience you 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 55 

possess your 'souls. Rest in Him and keep 
on beholding and you will keep on growing 
like Him. 

Thirdly, we learn from the text, by what 
power this wonderful transformation is to take 
place. " Even as by the spirit of the Lord " 
At the beginning God made man in his own 
image ; the same hand is now at work restor • 
ing that image which was lost by the fall. 
Take heart troubled, anxious, soul ! You 
have been at work so long trying to imitate 
the image of the Lord and you have made 
such wretched work. Your painting is so 
incomplete ; your sculpturing is so wretched- 
ly a failure. Just let the master workman of 
the universe take a hand at the work while 
you look at the copy and find rest for your 
soul ; '* In quietude and rest shall be your 
strength." Believe and be saved. Look and 
live. Behold and be transformed. To make 
you Christlike is a work too difficult for 
human power ; too delicate for the manipu- 
lation of human hands. From such material 
a Phidias could not sculpture a God-image ; 
much less you the God-image. On such a 
canvas a Raphael could not pamta Madonna ; 
much less you the image of the Son of Mary. 



56 THE SEEN- FAITH, 

Now, let the Spirit of the Lord do His own 
work. The Spirit of the Lord! It was His 
power which fashioned the universe out of 
atoms He moulded the myriads of stars 
and set them in his heavens. He touched 
them into golden splendor and there they 
are a testimony to His workmanship. He 
rolled out the blue vault and put there that 
central star of our system which holds our 
world in the grasp of His mighty power. He 
spake and the dark chaos of this earth took 
shape. He touched it and lo ! the dark 
mould trembled and quivered with life and 
from pole to pole the earth was covered with 
living green. He spake and rills rushed down 
mountain sides, rivers glided through meadows 
and rolled on to the sea ; forests lifted their 
proud heads toward heaven ; flowers of every 
shade and color sent forth their perfume and 
reveled in beauty ; birds of every plumage 
lifted their voices in nature's hymns of praise ; 
living creatures of sea and land and air started 
forth on the mission of their Creator. Then 
at last man and vroman, with eyes to see 
God's beauty, ears to catch the quivering 
sound vibrations and turn them into God's 
melodies, voices to tell forth His praise, intel- 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 57 

lects to think and hearts to love, stood forth 
at his command, the crowning work of his 
creation. Why are ye fearful ? This is the 
same Spirit which lingers near you, longing 
to transform your souls into his own most glor- 
ious image. Let that hand, which fashioned 
from atoms a universe, now sculpture your 
soul into the likeness of Himself. Let that 
brush which painted the cheek of the lily, the 
rose, the jasamine, the forget-me-not, paint 
you into Christlikeness. Shall He not clothe 
you, who clothed the lily, O ye of little faith ? 
Shall not He who caused the stars to sing 
together of his wonderful power and to shed 
forth the glory of his wonderful mind, not be 
able to transform your countenance into the 
beauty of Heaven ? 

Even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Cheer 
up, my fpiend ! Though you have failed a 
thousand times. He that has begun a good 
work in you is able to carry it on to perfection 
and to present you faultless before His pres- 
ence with exceeding joy. The fact that it 
is His work is the guarantee that it will be 
completed. Here there is power, for He 
fashioned the universe and made man once in 
his own image. He can do it again, and Hq 

5 



56 THE SEEN FAITH, 

will if you will let him and will look. Here 
there is willingness, for here there is ever- 
lasting love at work at the transformation. 
Ye shall be complete in Him. The fact that 
He is at work is the guarantee that it will be 
lovely at last. Yes ; your image my friend, 
is bound to be altogether lovely some day if 
you will sit and behold His glory while He 
works at you, moulding and fashioning you 
into His own image. You are in God's studio. 
He is pamting your picture. Feature by 
feature it is growing there on the canvas Is 
the work somewhat wearisome to you ? Then 
while He works look around in His workshop. 
See the marvelous handiwork of His creation ! 
Surely you will not get tired of that ! While 
you look at His glory, He works at your like- 
ness. You are lost among so much splendor ; 
you forget yourself beholding such prodigal- 
ity of glory. At last He summons you. The 
picture is completed. You start back in sur- 
prise. Surely you can not be that lovely 
image standing out from that immortal can- 
vas ! That is the likeness of the artist. You 
turn to the glass, when lo, you see that you, 
yourself, are transformed into the image of 
the artist. While you have been beholding 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 59 

his glory He has been transforming you until 
your countenance shines as the sun and your 
beauty transcends the beauty of angels. 

'' Beholding as in a glass the glory of the 
Lord, we are changed into the same image, 
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of 
the Lord." 

Look and live and be transformed ! 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 

Text: II Peter, III : i8. '' But grow in grace, and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." 

There is presented to the world in the 
Scriptures, a catalogue of names which repre- 
sent every phase of human nature. Here we 
find the rich and poor ; the moral and the 
immoral ; those born in Christian families, 
and those born in sin ; the conservative and 
the impetuous; the cultured and the ignorant ; 
^ the steadfast and the wandering; all these 
enlisted in the army of the Lord. There is 
not a phase of character here this morning, 
but what will find its representative in the 
revealed Word. And somehow, through a 
variety of experiences, the Lord of this uni- 
verse brings them at last to a perfect salvation. 
How this one thought ought to cheer the 
church militant. The Lord is no respecter 
of persons, but stands read}^ with power to 
save all who come unto Him, and He that 
hath begun a good work in you will complete 
it if you will let Him, Be not discouraged, 



GROWTH IN CIIRISTLIKENESS. 61 

Among all the characters marshaled before 
us in the Bible, not one stands out more clearly 
than that of Peter. Doubtless this one 
character has brought more comfort to erring 
humanity than all the others who are strictly 
human. '• Thank God for Peter," has been 
the cry of many a wanderer returning home ; 
and many a wanderer has been brought back 
by reading the early life of the impetuous 
disowner and blasphemer. To one who has 
only known the early life of Peter, it would 
seem quite inconsistent to attribute the 
text of this morning. It is not quite con- 
sistent with him who cast himself into the sea, 
and who seems to stand out with such 
strength as he tells his Tord, that He shall 
not suffer death, and, that although all men 
shall forsake Him, he will not. After a com- 
panionship of only a few months, Peter seems 
to have jumped full fledged into the devel- 
oped character of his Master. As quickly as 
he sprang into the sea and commenced his 
first walk on the waves, he seems also to have 
sprung into the height of the stature of Jesus, 
the Christ. Draw a veil over the record of 
his fall, and then read the text about growing 
in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and 



62 THE SEEN FAlTH, 

Saviour Jesus Christ, and you would not say 
that Peter wrote that for the guidance of young 
Christians, but such was the case. If Peter 
had written this Epistle when he was a young 
man, and previous to his fall, he would have 
put '^ spring," or "jump," or ''rush," in the 
place of the word '' grow." But Peter is 
getting along in years now, and has had 
experience, and as he looks over the record 
of his past it takes the '^ rush " out of him. 
He sees that when he thought he was so 
strong, he was the weakest of the weak ; that 
when he thought he was a full grown man, 
he was but an infant in the cradle ; that when 
he thought he knew all about his Master, and 
so much that he was fitted to rebuke Him, 
and instruct Him, he knew but little about 
Him. So now the gray haired Peter talks 
about '' growing in grace," and " growing in 
knowledge." What a seeming paradox this 
life of ours is. We are all very much like 
Peter. When we think we are strong, then 
we are weak ; when we thmk we are weak, 
then we are strong. When we think we are 
wise, then we are foolish ; and when we think 
we are foolish, then we are wise. When we 
think we are about right, we are farthest 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 63 

from the Master ; when we think we are most 
sinful, then we may be nearest Him. Every 
man passed middle life, who has grown wise 
with the passing years, will tell you that this 
is true. The young man full of young blood 
thinks that he is sufficiently strong to with- 
stand the wiles of the devil and all tempta- 
tion. Right there is his weakest moment. 
He shows that he has taken no adequate 
inventory of his own capabilities and no cor- 
rect measurement of the powers of evil. He 
must learn by sad experience what Paul 
learned, that when he was weak he was strong. 
The young man is quite apt to know it all, 
ahd to need no counsel from the lips of 
father or mother. When he is old he will say 
in common with us all, that father was right, 
and he will long with bitter longing for that 
same counsel which he has despised. Right 
there in the bitterness of his spirit while he 
thinks himself the fool, he will stand closest 
to at least the possibility of knowledge. And 
then when we think we stand, we are to take 
heed lest we fall. This applies to us all and 
is not only characteristic of the young. When 
the Master told his disciples that one of them 
should betray Him, they all began to cry out, 



(J4 THE SEEN FAITH. 

" Is it I/' save Judas. Standing so near to 
Jesus they were conscious as is every disciple 
who is very n^ar Him, that human nature is 
very untrustworthy and is Hable to fall at 
almost every turn. But in that self-conscious 
weakness was their strength, and Judas was 
the one to betray Him. So it came about 
that that disciple who boasted most of his own 
strength and loyalty and bravery, though 
warned thrice, slept while his Master was 
being betrayed, denied his Lord thrice the 
same night, and cursed against the God who 
gave him life. In his boasting and self-con- 
sciously strong days, he was the weakest of 
the weak. When he thought he could reach 
Heaven at a single bound, he was far down 
the ladder and just ready to fall to the ground 
beneath. But the years have brought to him 
wisdom of the purest kind, and having received 
a fuller knowledge of the character of Jesus 
and His stature, he is awed by its height. 
Boasting and self-conscious strength have 
left him, and he talks now of growing in grace 
and in knowledge. Let us learn wisdom from 
Peter's experience. 

Listening to this exhortation of Peter's 
given in the text, I desire to call your atten- 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 05 

tion to Christian growth. In this discourse, 
I would carry out a little more fully the 
thought presented in last Sunday's discourse 
of the process of growing into Christiikeness. 
The thought therein expressed w^as, that we 
were changed into the likeness of Jesus by 
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord 
with which we are environed. The principal 
thought for us today is embodied in the one 
word, to grow. Let us examine its meaning. 

I. To grow means to increase. This 
exhortation of Peter's is to an increase toward 
the stature of Jesus; to increase more and 
more into the Christiikeness ; to climb higher 
and higher toward the heights of Christian 
character ; to become more and more like the 
Heavenly and less and less like the earthy ; 
to show more and more the fruits of the 
Spirit. 

The fact that "to grow "means to increase, 
may seem so simple that it need not be men- 
tioned, but for all its simplicity, if it were 
remembered, it would solve many difficulties 
and offer many encouragements. Some of 
the simplest facts are the more easily forgot- 
ten from their very simplicity. That Peter 
meant that w^e were to increase day by day, 



66 THE SEEN FAITH, 

into the stature of the God-man, should bring 
great encouragement to the discouraged. As 
you look at the image of the Son of God and 
see its complete perfection, you say that it is 
so far above you, you can never reach it. 
The distance is so great that you can never 
travel it. You look at yourself and you seem 
so ugly in comparison. There are so many 
defects ; so many weaknesses ; so many fail- 
ures. You cry out in despair. But Peter says, 
that you are to increase toward the goal. You 
are to travel onward toward that height. You 
are to climb to the summit. You are not like 
the perfect image now, but there is to be an 
increase until you reach it. You are to grow 
yet, so do not be discouraged with the poverty 
of your present attainments but go on, or rather 
grow on to perfection. The boy wants to be a 
great lawyer, but as he looks at a Choate or a 
Webster, and then realizes how little there is 
to him yet, in every way which goes to make 
such men, he sits down in despair. A loving 
mother says to him : ^' My boy, you are not a 
Webster nor a Choate now, but you are to 
increase in talent, in execution, and in knowl- 
edge, until you reach your coveted goal. 
That talent of yours is to be increased by 



GROWTH IN CIIRISTLIKENESS, 67 

exercise ; you are to add to your little store 
of knowledge; you are to develop in execu- 
tion, until you reach far on toward perfection." 
The boy listens ; he takes courage ; he grows; 
and one day he sits as Chief Justice of our 
highest court. He had been measuring him- 
self by the increased and acquired attam- 
ments of our best, and by not making allow- 
ance for the increase and the acquiring, had 
become discouraged. Christian friend! Make 
allowance for the increase I Remember that 
God has permitted no distance to intervene 
between you and the stature of Jesus but 
what He will see to it you shall cover by 
legitimate increase in Christlike attainments. 
No matter how ugly your present likeness, 
take courage I you are to grow into Christ- 
likeness ! Make allowance for the growing ! 
This idea of increase, should be a stimulus 
to the slothful and negligent. There are 
thousands in our churches who do not grow, 
if at all, very fast. Thousands of listless and 
inactive ones, who are wasting time and 
opportunity, while those who are near them, 
with not half their start toward the likeness 
of Jesus, are passing them toward that goal, 
and will soon leave them far behind. Thous- 



. 68 THE SEEN FAITIL 

ands who seem to think that all there is to 
** being saved " is to repent and join the 
church and then go right on the old way, 
never making any increase. Making the sad 
and foolish mistake that salvation means to 
be saved from hell and be saved in Pleaven, 
not realizing that Jesus came into the world 
on a far different purpose, to make men 
Christlike, and that in doing this and only in 
doing this, will He save us from punishment, 
and give us everlasting happiness. Friend, 
you who have sat with folded hands so long, 
not only not making any progress but going 
the other way all the time, up and on_! there 
must be an increase if you are ever like the 
Master. The time to begin it is now. 

Then there is a word of caution for those 
who seem to think that we are to reach that 
character by some mysterious process, all at 
once. That if any of the old life still clings 
to one after conversion, there is no conver- 
sion. That we are to be made full grown 
men by regeneration and immediate sanctifi- 
cation. That we are to S[)ring into Heaven 
at one bound and then rest in lasting peace. 
Friend, your way has in it much of restfulness 
if it were only God's way. But His way is 



GRO WTH lA' ClfKISTLIKENESS. 69 

something different. There is to be growth ; 
increase into Christlikeness and unto his stat- 
ure. This immediate way was the way of the 
young man Peter ; to grow, to increase, was 
the way of the old and experienced Peter. 
Your way of springing fullfledged into the 
image of the God-man is the way of Grecian 
mythology, but not the way of the Bible. In 
this way you stunt your own growth and dis- 
courage those who are not so blessed as you 
in coming so near the coveted goal, so soon. 
To increase in grace, and in the knowledge 
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the 
way of Heaven. 

2. But, while "' to grow " means '' to 
increase," it means something more than 
the word *' to increase " means. These terms 
have much in common, but there is much of 
meaning that is different. It is the word '^ to 
grow " which Peter uses, and it is in harmony 
with the Biblical expression all the way through 
the word. To increase means something 
additional no matter what the process ; to 
grow means to develop, naturally, roundly, 
gradually, taking into consideration the pro- 
cess of development. You can increase the 
capacity of a house by building an addition, 



70 THE SEEN FAITH. 

The capacity has increased by addition but not 
by growth. The rill which comes tumbling 
down the hillside maybe suddenly developed 
into a torrent by a heavy shower. It is in- 
creased abnormally but not naturally. You 
could say the rill has increased in volume, but 
would not say it grew. To grow, means to 
increase gradually, slowly. To be sure now 
and then you can properly say that a thing has 
grown which springs up in the night, like a 
mushroom but here is the exception and not 
the rule. There are professed christians who 
seem to spring up like a mushroom from some 
mossy bed, but they usually die as quickly. 
They are they to whom the Master referred in 
the parable of the sower, as those who spring 
up at once, and then wither away because 
of the thinness of the soil. This does not 
do away with this characteristic of growth, 
gradient, or slowness. Heaven is not reached 
at a single bound ; we climb to that summit 
round by round. It is climbing, but it is slow 
and sure climbing. It is progress, but it is 
gradual progress. It is like the progress of 
the oak and not like the swelling of the tor- 
rent. It is the progress made by the Cedars 
of Lebanon, and not like the sudden uplifting 



GROWTH IN CHRIS TL IKE NE SS. 7 1 

of a liberty pole. It is like the growth of the 
coral reef, and not like the volcanic upheaval 
of an island in a single night. It is the com- 
ing of daylight, and not the flash of the 
meteor. It is also characteristic of growing 
that it is imperceptible, except by compari- 
sons, made at long intervals of time. You do 
not see the flowers grow, but they are grow- 
ing just the same, and as you make proper 
comparisons week by week you realize it. 
You cannot see the oak grow or even the soft 
maple, but as you make comparisons year by 
year you discover the progress. And just 
this gradual and imperceptible increase is 
characteristic of growth into Christlikeness. 
There is no sudden springing up in the night ; 
no volcanic upheavals ; no rushing meteor 
like unto the heavens. The process of trans- 
formation is flower-like, oak-like, physical 
stature-like, to be seen only by proper com- 
parison at long intervals. One word of 
caution here. We are talking about the devel- 
opment of Christian character into Christlike- 
ness and we are not talking of conversion. 
Many are the men who have been suddenly 
transformed from evil deeds to good doing by 
repentance and regeneration, but they are as 



73 THE SEEN FAITH. 

thoroughly undeveloped unto the stature of 
Jesus as the babe in the cradle is undeveloped 
in physical stature. He may be a perfect 
babe, but he is far from a perfect man. It is 
the development we are considering. 

In these characteristics of growing there is 
vast comfort as well as instruction. Comfort 
in the fact that God knows that we are weak, 
that we are young, and that in consequence 
of our weakness and our youthfulness we 
shall fall many times ; we shall come far short 
of the fullness of the stature at first ; we shall 
have much about us that is unlike the Christ- 
likeness at the start. And comfort in the fact 
that He has told us that our development would 
be a growth ; that we might not realize it at all 
times, but that we would come gradually and 
naturally into the likeness of the image, unto 
the fullness of the stature. This should be 
music to us who have been discouraged at our 
seemingly slow growth in grace. 

You are beginning lessons in painting. 
Your instructor is master of the art He 
does not expect you to execute perfectly at the 
outset. You would not need the instructor 
if you could. You have one because you do 
not know the way. He teaches you the 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKEIVESS. 73 

principles first. How careful he is in showing 
you your mistakes. He does not scold you, 
but corrects you gently as any master would. 
He leads you step by step from one principle 
to another. Not making an artist of you all 
at once. In the by-and-by he gives you pic- 
tures to paint. You take your first effort to 
him. He looks it over, telling you its good 
points, showing you where you have made the 
failures and sends you back to correct the 
faults. You are climbing the ladder of art 
round by round. You do not give up because 
you have made failures. You correct and 
move forward. By this process of correction 
and advance, and advance and correction, you 
are growing into an artist. How much good 
it does you to know that your instructor is a 
master and that he can lead you to success if 
you apply what he teaches. How much com- 
fort it gives you in knowing that because he 
is a master he will.be careful of you in your 
failures. It is only the half artist who scolds 
and frets at the pupil. The master knows 
himself how to bear with you in your infirm- 
ities, because he is the master. How much 
comfort there is in knowing that the master 
knows you can make but gradual progress. 

6 



74 THE SEEN FAITH. 

How different it would be with you if you 
thought he expected you to paint a perfect 
picture all at once. 

Do you think the Master of this universe 
will be less charitable and kind and loving in 
leading us up to the greatest of all models ? 
Just this process of advance and correction, 
and correction and advance is his way in 
dealing with us as He leads us toward the 
stature of the God -man. He knows we can 
not do this all at once and He deals with us 
accordingly. He expects us to grow, not as 
those who have attained perfection, but as 
those who are growing on unto perfection. 
He expects us to do the best we can at every 
stage of our progress and that is all. He has 
written unto us that we sin not, but in the 
next sentence He has told us that if we do 
sin we have an advocate with Him, even Jesus 
Christ the righteous. We are growing into 
Christlikeness, but we are 'growing into it as 
the flowers and trees grow, and this is God's 
way for us. 

3. Finally, '^to grow "implies life. There 
is no growth without life. Things increase 
by addition and accretion, things grow by 
assimilation, Things lifeless increase by 



GROWTH IlSf CHRISTLIKENESS. 75 

additions made to them ; things of life grow 
by turning material into things like themselves, 
literally into themselves. The inorganic or 
lifeless increase, the organic or lively grow. 
Things organic develop from within outward, 
things inorganic develop for the most part by 
additions made upon the outside. Christian 
growth bears a closer resemblance to physical 
growth than we all recognize, and this is seen 
by a careful study of the biblical expressions 
used in speaking of our development Godward. 
Let us look a little more closely then into 
the process of physical development. What 
makes the boy-stature develop into the man- 
stature ? One thing is most certain, he does 
not make himself grow. No one ever thought 
in seriousness to command a boy to grow. 
You often hear the expression, " wait until 
you grow," ^' do not be discouraged; you 
will grow," but never the command given 
seriously to the child to grow. You know 
better than that. You often tell the child 
to lay hold on the things by means of which 
he will grow, and without which he will not 
grow, but you never tell him to grow. Who 
by taking thought can add a cubit to his 
stature ? You recognize the ^iffer^ncebetweeq 



76 THE SEEN FAITH, 

the means and the cause. You would not put 
a mummy through all the motions of eating 
food and of exercise with any expectancy of 
its developing physically. Indeed, put the 
mummy through all the motions of which the 
human body is voluntarily capable and there 
will be no growth. We all recognize without 
a question that something is necessary besides 
such voluntary action. What is it ? It is that 
subtle thing we call life. Once let the physi- 
cal being be taken possession of by life and 
then respiration, foods and exercise will avail 
something, but without this life-principle it is 
useless. Now if we- will be wise enough to 
make the same distinction concerning our 
spiritual growth, it will help solve many of the 
theological riddles which puzzle us. 

In the next place no one can create this 
life. Scientists have been trying for cen- 
turies to create life, but they have completely 
failed and will fail. Life is given by a higher 
power than man and by no creation of which 
we are capable can we make dead forms live. 
Let us bear that in mind as we look to our 
spiritual development. 

Again there is a law known as the law 
of conformity to type, that is all kinds of life 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 77 

will produce and only produce living forms 
like itself. The bird life will not produce 
that of beasts. The principal of life which 
forms the fox will never form the man. All 
kinds of physical life will produce only its own 
kind. 

Trying to be clear at the risk of being weari- 
some, let me ask you to go with me a little 
farther into this idea of life. All living 
organisms are composed of three parts, viz : 
nutrient matter, living matter, and formed 
matter. Taking the cell which is the unit of 
life you will find flowing into the cell and 
toward the center matter taken into the system 
as nourishment. In the center of the cell you 
will find certain colorless matter which is full 
of life. The nutrient matter passes into this 
living matter and itself becomes alive and it 
then passes off as formed matter to the outside 
of the cell. What is this point of life which 
has the power to change the food you eat into 
bone and nerve and muscle ? What is this sub- 
tle force which has the power to change life- 
less matter into living matter ? 

These life centers are scattered thickly 
throughout the living physical system. There 
are three things about these life centers which 



78 THE SEEN EAITH. 

I want you to notice, (i) They transform 
lifeless matter into living matter. (2) They 
weave the matter thus transformed into bone 
and muscle and nerve, and when I say weave 
I mean that they literally, like shuttles in a 
loom, weave bone and muscle and nerve. 
This weaving they do not do indiscriminately. 
Each life point has its own office to perform 
and each weaves bone or muscle or nerve and 
nothing else. The life center set to weave 
nerve never forgets its work and never weaves 
anything but nerve, and the same is true of 
the others. (3) They so weave bone and 
muscle and nerve as to form a complete phys- 
ical form and they make no mistake. Notice 
again that all these life points are the same 
wherever you may find them. The life 
points in man are the very same as those in 
the elephant, and those in the elephant are 
the very same as those in the flower as far as 
can be discovered by the most powerful micro- 
scopes ; and they are composed of the very 
same chemical properties. Yet with this same- 
ness of the life points they make no mistake. 
The life point in the man weaves the human 
physical form and never that of the flower ; 
the life point of the flower makes no mistake 



GROWTH IN CIIRISTLIKENESS. 79 

and always weaves the flower, never the ele- 
phant. These life points are wiser than the 
wisest man whom they weave ; they do a 
work he can never do, and they always con- 
form their work to a definite plan or type and 
never overstep their boundary. 

With these things in mind we are ready for 
certain conclusions in the realm of the spirit- 
ual and the Scriptures give us the fullest war- 
rant for the analogy. 

(i). There is no spiritual growth without 
spiritual life. The Scriptures tell us that the 
natural man is spiritually dead and has no 
life. He will never grow into Christlikeness 
unless he becomes spiritually alive. 

(2). This spiritual life is not created by 
man. No one can produce it. It must come 
from above him. The Scriptures tell us that 
the natural man must be born from above and 
by the spirit before he can possess spiritual 
life. 

(3). It must be produced by its own kind. 
Plani life, animal life, human life, intellectual 
life, moral life can not produce it, it can come 
alone from spiritual life. 

(4). Once being introduced it will build 
wiser than the wisest. The physical stature 



80 THE SEEN FAITH. 

of the fool may be just as fine and perhaps 
more complete than that of the wisest man. 
No one v/ill dispute this in the physical realm 
Let me then affirm in the name of the Bible, 
in the name of science and in the name of 
human experience, that the spiritual life 
center placed in the human soul by the opera- 
tion of the Spirit will build wiser than the 
wisest member of the church. That though 
you maynever understand theoperations of the 
Spirit, you will grow in grace if you but take 
the proper nourishment and exercise. The 
foolish eat and exercise and the life centers 
within them weave them into man and woman. 
They know nothing of the process ; they care 
less. The life centers are responsible for the 
growth. So let us have no more anxiety 
about the growth in grace which we do not 
understand. Let us have no more talk about 
waiting until we understand the operations 
of the Spirit before we ask for this life of 
Heaven. Let us see to it that we have the 
proper nourishment and exercise, and leave 
the Christlike development to those spiritual 
life centers given us at conversion. While 
there is no growth without life there is certain 
growth with life. 



GROWTH IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 81 

(5). And now for the most restful lesson 
of all. The life will produce its own in kind, 
and will conform the image it is building to 
the image from which it has derived its life. 
What is the image into which we desire to 
grow ? None other than the most glorious 
image of the Son of God. From whence then 
shall we take our life ? From whom if not 
from the very One into whose Image we desire 
to grow ? Was it not He who said, ** I am 
the life ? " Receiving your life from Him and 
taking our analogy from the laws of nature, 
and our clue from the Scriptures, there is as 
much need for worry about our growing into 
His image, as there is need for worry on the 
part of the boy lest he never grow into the 
man. And there is as much need for us to 
worry about our ultimately becoming con- 
formed into the image of our Lord, as there 
is need for the boy to worry lest the life points 
within him forget their work and turn him into 
the eagle. There are two things which should 
concern us. Have we the spiritual life, and 
are we taking nourishment and exercise. If 
we fulfill Peter's exhortation and grow in 
grace we must have life. Then at Jesus' feet, 
beholding his glory, we shall rest, as from step 



82 THE SEEN FAITH. 

to Step, from height to height, from glory to 
glory, the spiritual life points within us mould 
and fashion, or weave us into the image of 
the Lord. Mysterious ? yes ; but that is what 
the Lord told Nicodemus, and He gave him 
no explanation. He only said that the natural 
was just as mysterious. 



\t\ 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 

Text : — John XII : 32. " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth 
will draw all men unto me." 

Is this the word of God, or the word of 
man ? Did Christ mean what he said ? He 
has been uplifted ; that is, crucified. Men of 
all nations have come unto Him, but not every 
man of all nations. Is that day coming ? 

Look at the indications at home. Are all 
the masses Christian in this city ? Nay/ 
rather are they all church attendants ? What 
is the aggregate church attendance at the 
morning services of all our churches, Protes- 
tant and Catholic? How many pews are 
vacant at the evening services ? Are there 
pews sufficient in all our church auditories to 
accommodate all our population? If not, 
why not ? Why are there so many listless 
concerning religious things ? Why are there 
so many openly against the church ? 

Will original sin alone explain all these 
conditions ? Has the uplifted Christ lost his 
drawing power ? Is the arm of the Omnipo- 
tent wearied ? Has He who came to save us 
given us up after all ? After all these years of 



84 THE SEEN FAITH. 

effort to save humanity, and still seeing us 
with our backs toward Him, is He about to 
leave us to our own destruction and satisfy 
Himself with angels and such redeemed as 
have gone up already? No, His arm is not 
shortened. His ear is not heavy. His love 
is everlasting. He longs to save the world 
today as when He wept over Jerusalem. He 
longs to fill theseempty pews. He longs to see 
these souls saved beyond the deepest longing 
of our heart. Whatever may be the cause for 
failure, it certainly can not be on His part. 
It must be with our finite selves. 

What, then, is the nature of the cause which 
makes those multitudes which heard His word 
gladly in the days when He spake directly to 
men, now gladly stay away from the church 
where it is commonly supposed that His word 
is spoken ? Do we need finer churches ? 
The better the church edifice, the better if it be 
built to the glory of God. Do the best we 
can and we shall not rival the temple of Solo- 
mon,built under the direction of the Almighty. 
But finer churches do not solve the problem. 
Our churches are finer today than they have 
ever been before, and still the congregations 
do not keep pace with them. 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST, 85 

Do we need a better education, a more 
cultured ministry ? The better the education, 
the better if it be that of the head and the heart, 
and not that of manner simply. But higher 
education among the ministry has not solved 
the problem. Indeed the reverse in the main 
has been the truth. Says Prof. Phelps, '* A 
scholarly ministry, taken as a whole, is work- 
ing away from the unscholarly masses of 
people. The religious press of England 
and Scotland confess the sundering. Infidel 
critics triumph over it. The Westminister 
Revieiv discusses the fact as one which candid 
men will not deny. Reformers and states- 
men are looking about them for other agencies 
than those of the church and the pulpit to 
elevate the degraded and control the danger- 
ous classes." As a rule the pulpit has never 
been more scholarly than it is today, but still 
the failure is apparent. 

Do we need a greater approach to formal- 
ism ? No. A dead formalism is a standing 
apology for impotency. The nearer one gets 
to the great heart of Christ, the more simple 
will be his w^orship. 

What then can be the reason for the failure 
to r^ach the ear of the great multitude ? 



86 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Listen : '' And I, if I be lifted up will draw 
all men unto me." Christ has been uplifted 
on the cross, and now He must be uplifted 
before the world ; and He, not Moses which 
uplifts, will draw all men unto Him. Christ 
uplifted is emphatically the need of the 
church today. With Him presented, there is 
power. With Him hidden behind the selfish- 
ness of a ministry or membership, there is 
impotency and empty pews and lack of soul- 
saving service. 

How then shall He be uplifted that the 
world may see Him and feel His power ? 

I. In the Word. Thank God that the 
centuries have not robbed It of Its power. 
Preach the Word, was Paul's charge to Tmio- 
thy. Preach the Word is Christ's charge to 
the church through Paul. Preach the Word, 
O ministers ; preach the Word, O Christians. 
The world will not be won to Christ through 
the uplifting of science, through the uplifting 
of philosophy, through the uplifting of meta- 
physics. Do not depreciate these handmaids 
of God. They are each taking a grand part 
in the upward lifting of the centuries. They 
fortify, they render certain, but they do not 
inyit^, they dp not draw men tg Christ,. 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 87 

They are instruments of power in their depart- 
ments, but the sword of the Spirit is the word 
of God. Christ said that the seed was the 
Word. He never said of science and philoso- 
phy, *' they are spirit and they are life." But 
of the Word it is said,'' It is quick and powerful, 
sharper than any two edged sword." Imagine 
Christ preaching a series of sermons on the 
** Metaphysics of the Good News." Christ 
came preaching the Gospel, and not the phi- 
losophy of the Gospel. He came showing 
forth a life and not a skeleton. And yet The 
Great Sanhedrim would have been delighted 
with such a course, and so might the Church 
of Corinth. But the Gospel from the lips of 
Jesus and His disciples was almost exclusively 
to the masses. They preached to the com- 
mon mind and reached it, and they preached 
the Word in simplicity and in power. It is 
the simplicity of the sermons of Jesus, packed 
full of the wisdom of the Eternal that is a stum- 
bling block to the learned and the power of 
God in the salvation of the masses. There 
are some minds which will never be satisfied 
unles5 a sermon is too deep for the under- 
standing of the common crowd. Jesus paid 
but little attention to such minds, but He did 



88 THE SEEN FAITH, 

not preaeh to empty benches. He touched 
the multitude, which are never to be won by 
icicle attitudes nor philosophy coming from 
frozen seas. Here Pharisee and Sadducee 
failed ; here Christ won. 

How is it with us today ? Too many times 
a text of scripture is taken as a starting point, 
and a starting point it is ; there is no coming 
back to it. A metaphysical theme is taken that 
seems to fit what some choose to call the hid- 
den meaning of the text. Nothing more is 
heard of the text. There is no quoting of 
Scripture, but something of Goethe and 
Shakespeare, and the philosophy of sweetness 
and light. A few listen, a few more sleep, 
many more minds wander. The sermon is 
pronounced a deep one, and the preacher is 
satisfied. Christ is hidden behind the hidden 
meaning ; is crucified but not uplifted. 

There is too much such preaching. Is it 
any wonder the pews are vacant ? Is it any 
wonder that the tramp, tramp of the restless 
feet are heard on the pavement without, while 
the minister discourses to the few inside the 
house of God ? And not alone do we minis- 
ters forget to use the Word of God in simpli- 
city and in power, but the church itself. We 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 89 

ministers are too apt to be like newspapers, 
a mirror of the public mind showing forth 
just what the people demand. Away with- 
such trifling with things which are eternal ! 
Christ uplifted in the Word is the power of 
God to Jew and Greek. Preach the Word. 

2. By the Spirit. The Spirit is to testify 
of Christ. The two mentioned agents of 
power are the Word and the Spirit. Very 
much is said about the Spirit being always 
present in the church, which is very true. He 
is omnipresent. But the omnipresent Spirit 
in the church waiting to be useful is one thing, 
and the omnipresent Spirit at work is another. 
The Spirit is everywhere present to convince 
the world of sin and of judgment. But the 
Spirit works through a medium. That 
medium must be present that the Spirit may 
do His work. What is that medium ? The 
sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The 
Spirit can not cleave the heart of man if his 
sword be absent. The Word of God energized 
by the Spirit uplifting Christ will draw all 
men unto Him. Surely the Holy Spirit's 
presence, and his activity as the supreme wit- 
ness of Jesus, are two things and not one. 
That our churches are not filled and that the 

7 



90 THE SEEN FAITH, 

masses are outside its fold is proof positive 
that His activity is in some way hindered. 

Where ever the avenue of the Word is 
present for the use of the Spirit, there we still 
find the masses flocking, whether the preacher 
be a Jonathan Edwards or a Dwight L. 
Moody. 

3, Through human agency. In the Word 
by the Spirit, through human agency. " And 
ye also shall bear witness of me," were the 
words of Jesus to His disciples. Christ's 
disciples were to act in conjunction with the 
Spirit in bearing witness of Jesus. Is the 
power of the Spirit promised when we uplift 
anything else ? Metaphysics, philosophy, self ? 
Oh, that we might cry out with John the 
Baptist, ** I am the voice of Him, crying in 
the wilderness." Just the vocal utterance of 
Him. The speaking trumpet of the Almighty. 
No. Oh, that we would spend more time 
making the Word plain, not deep. Christ 
would then be uplifted and self would be 
hidden behind His glorious image. 

The masses will not be reached except 
through human agency. They will not read 
the Word. They do not care for that. The 
Word is the Bible of the church, the church 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 91 

the Bible of the masses. If the church will 
only let the Word shine through their lives 
so that the world can see it. If the church 
will only make the Word in and through their 
every day lives, so beautiful that it shall 
reflect most surely the image of the Christ,- 
it must uplift Jesus and then the crowd, the 
vulgi pop u It, the common people will come to 
Him. As we see the defects of the church ; 
as we see how this avenue is filled with so 
much of the world, so much with self, so 
much with anything but the sacrifice exhibited 
by the Master, is it any wonder that the crowd 
fails to see the picture of Him whose image 
was so much more marred than any other in 
His bearing the sins and sorrows of the fallen ? 
Is it any wonder that they are not attracted ? 
Let us not forget our position nor our mission. 
4. While Christ has directed that He shall 
be uplifted in the Word by the Spirit and 
through human agency. He has left the 
method of such presentation to the judgment 
of human agency enlightened by the Spirit. 
You can discover the wisdom of God in this. 
The Word, the Spirit, the needs of human- 
ity remain the same through the centuries. 
The Spirit of the age changes, and the man- 



92 THE SEEN FAITH. 

net of the presentation will change with the 
Spirit of the age ? That is the changing factor 
in this work of saving souls. The question 
will never be : Must the uplifted Christ be 
changed for something else, or the Word, or 
the Spirit to meet the demands of each suc- 
ceeding and changing age ? but the omni- 
present question will ever be: How best can I 
uplift Christ in my age. How can I best 
present Christ so that the crowd will listen .^ 
It is a question of method. How can I best 
meet the Spirit of my age with the uplifted 
Christ ? Are the methods now used meeting 
the demands of my age ? Or do they belong 
to a dead past ? 

What is the Spirit of our times ? Is it being 
met by the church ? How are the men of 
this world with the power of wealth and ambi- 
tion to quicken their faculties meeting it ? 
How are they reaching the masses for their 
own purposes ? Are the children of this gen- 
eration also wiser than the children of light ? 

The spirit of our age is the spirit of the 
telephone, the telegraph, the lightning ex- 
press. The spirit of a commerce that for 
activity, does more in one year than our fore- 
fathers did in twenty. It is a restless, nervous 



% 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 98 

age. An age of ceaseless activities and sud- 
den deaths. The American nation has been 
characterized often as the nation that is always 
in a hurry. That jumps the chains of the 
ferry boat to gain a moment of time. That 
is always in a hurry to catch the train. 

How shall the church catch the ear of such 
an age as this ? How shall the church demand 
a halt sufficiently long to uplift Jesus ? The 
church cannot bring the age to it, it must 
advance to it the age. As a well known 
and practical teacher of pulpits, says : '' It 
makes no difference whether the masses 
are growing away from the church or the 
church from the masses, the church must 
go and compel, not wait?" No, the church 
can not afford to wait while souls are be- 
ing lost. Practical results are what we are 
after. Results are what we must see in the 
name of an uplifted and risen Lord. Any 
theory that does not achieve results, is not the 
wisdom of Solomon, nor the wisdom of God. 

How are the business men who deal with the 
masses reaching them ? What style of news- 
paper comes the nearest to the heart of the 
masses of this age ? That newspaper is the 
very best index of the public heart. Why these 



94 THE SEEN FAtTH, 

large lines of type which head the columns 
of news ? Why now and then, is the story of 
some great event told in picture instead of 
type ? The old style of newspaper is a thing 
of the past. The successful paper of today 
is keeping time with the telegraph and rail- 
road. The old slow conservative edition of 
our fathers is lying in the tomb with their 
dust. What papers are read most by the 
great multitude? The Andove7' Review^ The 
North American Review, The New York Inde- 
pendent ox The Neiv York World 'i A traveler 
from Europe said not long ago, that while he 
had been in almost every conceivable place 
on the American Continent, he had yet to 
find a community so barbarian, or a hut so 
isolated as not to have a copy of the Ne%v 
York World in it. 

Does the church say she cannot lay aside 
her dignity and stoop to the level of that pop- 
ulace which rejects the best periodicals for 
the poorer ? But those journals penetrate even 
the dark recesses of the forest They reach 
the great multitude and they are about all the 
education many of them get. Did you real- 
ize what that sentence meant, they reach the 
great multitude ? That is what we are called 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 95 

to do, and that is what Jesus did too. The 
journals endeavor to reach them for the sole 
purpose of making money. They lay aside 
their dignity for that, and we, the church, have 
the supreme object of saving souls from death. 
Is it not time for us to be willing to do any- 
thing not sinful that is practical for reaching 
the great multitude ? It is for those Christ 
died. It was those He reached when on earth. 
He did not reach the rich and cultured Saddu- 
cees nor the learned Pharisees. We can only 
reach them by conforming in our methods to 
such a spirit of the times as finds its expres- 
sion in a demand for the racy^ the novel, the 
sometime sensational, the sometime flashy 
daily paper. Anything to reach men is the 
cry of the world Anything to reach men 
should be the cry of the church and not what 
did the fathers do in method. That does not 
mean that the church shall lay aside the best 
journals for the poorer, but do not forget that 
the Reviews do not reach the multitude. 

How does the lawyer reach the ear of his 
jury ? By a different road than that which he 
takes to reach the ear of the learned judge. 
But the jury are many times composed of 
inferior men the church says. But that jury 



96 THE SEEN FAITH. 

came from the masses that once heard Christ 
gladly and we must uplift Him before them. 
And how many judges has the church in its 
assemblies in comparison to those of the 
crowd ? How many learned men who could 
listen to its metaphysical discussions on the 
metaphysics of oughtness ? How many of the 
learned men care to listen ? 

How does the politician reach the ear of 
the great multitude ? Is there a shudder in 
the church ? Yet he is trying in the best way 
he knows to reach the great multitude that he 
may get their votes. The great multitude 
who dwell in the byways and hedges are those 
who carry our elections. Let the church 
understand that he is most wise who accom- 
plishes his purposes, even though it be not in 
the way of the schools. 

The old conservative methods will not reach 
the ear of the crowd on the part of the lawyer, 
the press, the platform, the man of commerce. 
How is it with the church 1 It too must meet 
the spirit of the age. It must of necessity go 
to it. Having won it by the uplifted Christ 
it can then educate and uplift until the great 
multitude shall grow in knowledge as well as 
in grace. 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. Ot 

1'he demands of the times then on the 
Christian Church is to uplift Jesus Christ in 
the Word by the Spirit through human agen- 
cies and by such methods as shall best meet 
the spirit of the age. 

Brethren, the signs of the times in the 
United States warn us that we must reach the 
great multitude and that soon, or find our 
country in ruins some day not far away. The 
only hope of this government is the Christian 
church. The only hope of its perpetuity lies 
in the risen Lord uplifted. Never in the his- 
tory of this nation has there been such 
discontent, such mutterings and that from the 
unchurched masses as today. Revolutionary 
measures are demanded at every turn. Revo- 
lution and discontent is being organized and 
organized for effectiveness. One who under- 
stands history should take warning. It was 
this same unchurched crowd, the masses of 
the world's common ones, the vulgi populi^ 
whom Jesus loved, for whom He died, and over 
whom He wept, as He saw them oppressed 
and scattered as sheep having no shepherd. 
It was this same motley throng from the by- 
ways and hedges whom He compelled to come 
to the kingly feast. It was this common herd 



96 THE SEEN EAJTH. 

whom He sanctified by being born from 
among them. He might have chosen the 
aristocracy and a palace of untold splendor 
for his origin and cradle, but He chose rather 
to come from the despised and lowly Naz- 
arines. He cast his lot with the poor and 
the lowly. But it was this same mass of 
struggling humanity which were responsible 
for the French Revolution. For centuries 
they had been looked down upon by royal 
blood and nobility and only wanted that they 
might be taxed for the support of the aris- 
tocracy of France. Every indignation possi- 
ble was heaped upon them by those who were 
professedly more noble than this common 
crowd. They would have annihilated them 
had it not been that there must be some to be 
ruled or else the dignity of the ruler be lost, 
and some one must pay the taxes that royalty 
may live. And the common mass stood under 
the burden until their spirit was well nigh 
broken. Then the church came to listen to 
those of royal blood and to forget those for 
whom Christ was uplifted. The mass did not 
go to the churches. They were not wanted. 
They were driven to the caves, and huts and 
mud hovels, with no one to pity. But the 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST. 99 

church by striving to reach the royalty at the 
expense of the great multitude, failed to reach 
any and France became the school of infidels 
and atheists. No wonder. Why not ? When- 
ever the church ceases to be practical she 
looses the highest reason for her divine origin. 
The world does not listen very much to the 
arguments for the existence of God or for the 
reasonableness of miracles, but it is moved by 
the practical helpfulness of the church. In 
the helpfulness of the church lies its highest 
argument. At last God heard the cry of 
those He came to save. He who says that 
vengeance belongs to Him listened and came 
as a scourge to punish France for her sin 
against His children, His little ones. The 
world knows the result. Oh, that the world, 
at least the church, would learn wisdom from 
it. We want no more French revolutions. 
But let America beware. Let the church 
take warning and so uplift Ghrist before the 
masses that they shall see Him and be healed. 
The hope of the future lies with them. 

We are not reaching the masses as we 
ought. 1 believe that Joseph Parker is right 
when he says that the trouble is not with 
the masses but nearer home. " Away with all 



too THE SEEN FAITIE 

this talk about reaching the masses," he says, 
'* rather let us have a revival in the pulpit 
and in the pews and the masses will be 
reached." 

God is in earnest after this great multitude. 
He will reach them, and by human agency. 
We must be used by Him for this or our can- 
dlestick will be removed and some other take 
its place which will shine. If they be not 
reached by the powers that be again will the 
moneychangers be driven out and the temple 
razed to the ground. 

Brethren, the great multitude lie all around 
us. They are a hungry throng. Just like 
the multitude Jesus met, and reached, too. I 
believe that this modern multitude are to be 
reached today just as well as they were 
reached in the centuries past. The masses 
of poor and halt and blind ; the masses of 
drunken and ragged and outcast, flock still to 
the standard of the cross whenever and 
wherever it is plainly revealed. Oh, that they 
might move us to compassion as they did 
Christ. Oh, that we might so uplift Jesus as 
to make them see Him. 

May this church not be afraid of that sneer, 
too common, that it reaches only the poorer 



THE UPLIFTED CHRIST, 101 

classes. The church which does not reach 
them has lost its hold on God. Let it be our 
boast, if boasc we must, that we are reaching 
the great multitude. That we rejoice when 
the poor and ragged and blind come into our 
church, and let us be ready to give them a 
place beside us and half our hymnbook. 
Remember that the today's poor of America, 
are tomorrow's rich ; that today's lowly are 
tomorrow's exalted. Remember the pit from 
whence you have been digged. Remember 
if the masses do not come to church, you 
must go to them. And by the uplifted Christ, 
in the word, through the Spirit, by human 
agency, and by such methods as shall pro- 
duce in our age, the best results, we shall 
catch the eye and reach the ear of the hurry- 
ing, restless throng. Then the kingdom on 
earth will come and His will be done as it is 
done in Heaven. 



THE MISSIOxNT OF JESUS. 

Text': — Luke XIX :io. '' For the Son of man is come to seek 
and to save that which is lost." 

The Son of man is come ! He has come 
down from the great white throne ! Down 
from the heaven of light and holiness. 

" My father's home of lig^ht, 
My rainbow circled throne 
I left for earthly night 

For wandering sad and lone." 

He left the band of angels, who are his 
ministering spirits. He has left His chariots 
which are 20,000. He has left the seraphim 
of the six wings, He has come down past the 
galaxies of worlds, down past the flashing 
suns which reflect His glory and grow pale 
in His presence, down past the greater suns 
and moons and stars and systems, to this little 
world of greater sin and sorrow. 

Methinks as He left '' His rainbow circled 
throne," that'the thousand seraphim flew with 
their faces veiled, and pled with Him that 
they might do His journey for Him ; that 
the 20,000 chariots were harnessed by angel 



THE MISSION 01 JESUS, 103 

bands to the horses of fire for Him, and the 
many thousand of swift-winged ones offered 
themselves as His escort. Down over the 
star sown pathway together they come, until 
on the threshold of the world He lets them 
chant one heavenly hymn that the world may 
have a faint conception of what such music 
is, and then he waves them back while He 
finishes the journey alone. But those minis- 
tering angels never leave Him. They hide 
themselves in the clouds from any earthly 
vision and await to serve Him if He will. 
Once He seems in His lonely sorrow to real- 
ize their nearness and want their presence, 
as He says, in the garden of the bloody 
sweat, " Thinkest thou not that I cannot pray 
to my Father and He shall presently give me 
more than twenty two legions of angels?" 
Yet, though near, they are not summoned, 
but await until, His work all finished, He 
ascends, and then they escort Him back to 
the throne. 

The Son of Man has come. He has been 
heralded long. We read of the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world — of the seed 
of the woman which should bruise the serpent's 
head — of the coming of Shilo. In law and 



104 THE SEEN FAITH. 

history and Psalm the golden thread of prom- 
ise runs. Prophet after prophet writes of His 
approach. Century after century sings of His 
coming, until the whole earth is trembling in 
expectancy, and every mother examines the 
new born babe to see whether he be the 
Christ or not. At last the angel chorus of 
'^ Peace on earth, good will toward men," 
breaks on the midnight air. Later on, John 
tlie Baptist cries, " Behold the Lamb of God, 
which taketh away the sins of the world," and 
*' I saw and bear record that this is the Son 
of God." 

The Son of Man has come ! Let the 
heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad ! 
Let the sea roar and the fulness thereof ! Let 
the field be joyful and all that is therein ! 
Let all trees of the wood rejoice before the 
Lord, for He has come ! He shall judge the 
earth in righteousness and the people with 
His truth. 

The Son of Man reigneth, let the earth 
rejoice ; let the multitude of isles be glad 
thereof. Now let the dumb lips sing his 
praise ! Let the deaf ears hear the melody of 
earthly music ! Let the broken in heart rejoice! 
Let the lame leap for thankfulness ! Let the 



THE MISSION OF JESUS. 105 

leper mingle in the congregation of the right- 
eous, for blind eyes have seen the coming of 
the Son of Man ! 

" Thou hast the words of eternal life, 
Thou giv^est victory in the strife, 
Thou only art the changeless friend, 
On whom for aye we may depend ; 
In life, in death, alike we flee, 
O Savior of the world, to Thee." 

First. — Why is the Son of Man come ? 
What great magnet drew Him from the skies ? 
What of earth thrown into Heaven's balances 
outweighed the splendor and glories of the 
other world ? Why did He not take His way 
to some of the Heavenly systems more grand 
than ours ? Why did not the constellation of 
Orion claim Him, or that of Ursus Major, or 
of the Southern Cross ? Why this earth, only 
an atom among other worlds ? Why has it 
been written that the Son of Man, ^' instead 
of the joys that were set before Him, endured 
the cross, despising the shame ?" What beauty, 
or joy, or worth did he see here to attract ? It 
was not supreme beauty or joy or worth, that 
was the magnet above all other magnets, but 
the simple fact that the world was worse than 
other worlds. Simple fact, did I say ? Awful 

8 



106 THE SEEN FAITH. 

fact, the rather ! The Son of Man came to us 
from the skies, past all other worlds, because 
the world was lost. You have read the start ^ 
ling incident of a child lost, have you not ? 
Some little girl wandering off in the darkness 
of the hill-top wood. A home first of anxiety, 
then of anguish. Friends gather and the 
search begins. First at home, in the yard, 
the barn, the garden, the orchard ; then at the 
neighbors' and finally out on the street, the 
piercing cry of ^' Child Lost " is heard. Street 
after street catches up the cry until the whole 
village resounds with " child lost." The vil- 
lage turns out of doors, torches gleam here 
and there. The hurrying tramp of feet, the 
murmuring of voices and the cry of multi- 
tudes now are heard, while feelings grow 
intense. The cry of ^' child lost" reverberates 
on the air. The towering steeple echoes it, the 
massive pile of buildings shout it back. The 
far off hills catch up the cry and from the 
towering pine tree tops, the faint echo of 
"child lost" vanishes into the star-lighted 
skies ; until friends, and streets and church 
tower and massive pile of buildings and far- 
off wood seem united in the search. So, 
methinks, the cry of lost went ringing through 



THE MISSION OF JESUS. 107 

the early paradise, out through the gate of 
Eden, up through its foliage as man fell. 
The awtul cry of lost shouted by attendant 
angels until wood and hill and far-off forest 
and towering peaks caught up the cry. The 
leaping rill, the murmuring river, the restless 
sea, sing a requiem as the world enwrapped 
in the glories of its creator, rolls out into 
darkness. The attendant at the gate of 
heaven blows a blast from his trumpet that 
awakes heaven to the fact that one world, 
that shone in such brilliancy before, has 
grown dim, and has finally been lost in the 
darkness. The golden harps grow silent, the 
Sons of God cease their shoutings, and the 
morning stars are out of time. Man has dis- 
obeyed his Maker, and the world no longer 
moves itself in sympathy with other worlds. 
Several chords in harmony, will not destroy 
the discord of the others. But one chord in 
discord, will mar the harmony of all the tune. 
As God creates the heavens and all that in 
them is, He set the worlds in harmony with 
the music of His own eternal heart, but the 
wandering world makes sad discord of such 
an heavenly symphony. Gross darkness en- 
velopes the world. Instead of sunlight, a 



108 THE SEEN FAITH, 

cloud. Instead of flowers uiithorned, the 
thorn and thistle. Instead of songs, wailing 
and gnashing of teeth. Instead of hearts 
joyous and full of light, hearts of pain and 
sorrow and doubt. Instead of sweet commun- 
ion with the ''Father of Spirits," armies in 
league with Satan, against God. Instead of 
peace, a sword. No wonder the Son of Man 
starts from the throne ! No wonder He comes 
down past other systems to this world of ours. 
He comes because the world is lost in the 
darkness of sin. 

Second. — The purpose for which He is 
come. For what purpose did He come ? Did 
He arise m His wrath and come forth in His 
anger to destroy the world for its wandering ? 
Did He come to the lost that He might anni- 
hilate them because they had fallen ? No! No! 
He, who framed the worlds by the word of 
His mouth, would not have come from Heaven 
to earth on such an errand ! By the power of 
His might, with one breath, from His throne 
He could have scattered this handful of dust 
we call a world and it would soon have been 
forgotten by the other worlds and all Heaven. 
But He came because He desired to save ! 
Incomprehensible thought ! Who of all earth 



THE MISSION OF JESUS. 109 

has comprehended it yet ? Who of this habit- 
able globe has ever understood the length 
and breadth and height and depth of the 
transcendent fact, that there is more joy in 
Heaven over the one repentant sinner of earth, 
than over the ninety and nine just persons of 
Heaven who need no repentance ? That was 
the joy placed by the love of God in the bal- 
ances of Heaven, which outweighed all the 
glories of the skies and that brought Him 
from the throne to the manger. Tell the fact 
to the lost world ! Keep it not back ! Publish 
the glad tidings to the world of sin I Publi- 
cans and harlots hereafter redeemed, reclaimed, 
transformed, can take their seat above those 
who need no repentance ! The man-forsaken 
is never more the God-forsaken. The man- 
forsaken is hereafter the God-loved, the God- 
redeemed, the God-kissed one. Socially ostra- 
cised on earth to be Heaven-received through 
Christ. And this Son of God came to seek 
that He might save. Man in his sins has ever 
been hiding away from God. He has always 
thought God his enemy. From Adam down, 
the voice of God has been heard calling to 
man, ''where art thou ?" and not the voice of 
man calling to God, " where art thou ?" And 
that the lowest sinner might know that God 



no THE SEEN FAITH. 

loved him it has been written, the Son of Man 
is come to '' seek " the lost. O sinner, man, 
unfortunate, wretched, lonely, man forsaken, 
listen to the Heavenly music of '' Peace on 
earth, good will toward men," for the Son of 
Man has come to seek you out that He might 
save you from your sins, your loneliness, your 
wretchedness, and transplant you from a sin- 
cursed earth to the eternal joys of the Heav- 
enly home. 

Third. — How he came. How did He come 
to accomplish that purpose? The Son of God 
became the Son of Man. Another fact most 
unfathomable ! The King of Kings becomes 
the child in the manger ; the Creator of the 
Universe, a carpenter s son, the angel-attended 
seraphim-served Lord of Lords, the Servant 
of the lost. What line can fathom that depth ? 
What measuring reed, though it be that of the 
angel, can measure these heights ? This Son of 
Man having the form of God, thinking it not 
robbery to be considered equal with God, took 
to himself the form of a servant, and being 
found \\\ the form of man, what followed ? 
The very experiences for which the Son of God 
became the Son of Man. \\\ the form of man 
He learned what weariness meant, and then 
said, " Come unto Me all ye that labor." In 



THE MISSION OF JESUS. Ill 

the form of man He learned what temptation 
meant and became the refuge of the tempted. 

" Tempted and tried 

Yet the Lord at my side, 
He'll guide thee and keep thee 
Though tempted and tried." 

In the form of man He walked straight 
through the experiences of man ; through 
tears and loneliness and bloody sweat up to 
the cross. In the form of man, His brow was 
thorn-crowned. His back scourged, His hands 
pierced. In the form of man, He died that 
He might redeem the world, that He might 
save the greatest sinners, who would come to 
Him. Thank God that the Son of God 
became the Son of Man that He might seek 
and save the lost I There would have been 
glory and majesty and power in the '' form 
of God," but not salvation. He laid His life 
along by the side of the worst sinners, that it 
might be possible to save. Now through the 
^' form of man " there is sympathy, pardon 
and peace for all who will receive Him. 

Again, the world swings into harmony with 
other worlds. Again the stars sing together 
and the sons of God shout for joy. Again 
the angels lift their harps and sweep their 
hands across them. Listen to the music, sin- 



112 THE SEEN FAITH. 

ner friend ! See those words written in the 
blood of the Son of Man, *' The redemption of 
man is accompHshed." Lift up thine eyes now 
to the everlasting hills. The Son of God 
again takes His place on the great white 
throne. The Heavenly host welcome Him 
back, His work accomplished. But His form 
is somewhat changed ; His brow bears the 
print of thorns ; His hands and feet and side 
are pierced. The seraphim looks wonderingly 
at these signs of suffering. Suddenly there 
is silence in Heaven. Then the twelve gates 
of pearl flash in the Heavenly light as they 
swing back on their hinges of gold. Up 
through these gates, from the north and south 
and east and west come an innumerable 
throng. The angels at the gates cry out, 
** These are the publicans and harlots and 
theives and outcasts of earth, who are 
redeemed through the Son of Man and have 
washed their robes and made them white in 
the blood of the Lamb." The Son of God 
rises on the throne ; He stretches out His 
hands in welcome and says, '' For these my 
hands were pierced." Sinners, will you be 
among that throng ? The Son of Man came 
to seek you that you might be there. Look 
to Him and be ye saved ! 



1 



JESUS, THE CHRIST. 

Tf.xt : — Afatt. XIV: 13-16. "And Simon Peter answered and 
said, Thou art Christ, the Son of the living Ciod." 

There is a name which is above every name, 
not only in its worth to the world, but also in 
the vast numbers who pay glad homage to it. 
It is a name known to more people and spoken 
in more languages than any other name the 
world has ever known, with the one exception 
of the name of (xod. That name is spoken 
also in love, and there is alway an uplifting 
of the heart with pure affection at its mention. 
So universally is it known that in all civilized 
nations it is the wonder of wonders when 
there is found some one who does not know 
Him for whom this name stands. 

Where ever this name has been known and 
honored, civilization has taken on a new 
form and a mighty impulse has been given 
to the developing and rounding out of the 
best qualities of man. Higher education in 
its best form, and morals in the fullest sense 
of what that word means, become the rule. 
In that name humanitv takes to its self a new 



114 TFIE SEEN EAITH. 

and better definition. Philanthropies multi- 
ply. Homes for the friendless, asylums for 
the fatherless, shelter for the homeless, schools 
for the penniless and missions to the Godless, 
and that without money and without price, 
spring up like mushrooms, but last like oaks. 
In that name people go out from loving 
homes into places of squalor and filth for no 
mercenary purpose, but for nothing other than 
to make some one else as beautiful in their 
life as themselves. In that name they uplift 
the fallen ; cast out devils ; redeem the out- 
cast, and give to the fallen and the degraded 
new lease of life. In that name they take 
their lives in their hands and sit by the couch 
of those dying by thousands from the mighty 
scourge of dire disease ; visit those in prison, 
and give the cup of cold water to the least of 
those who call themselves by that name. 
For that name men leave houses and lands, 
wife and children, fathers and mothers, and 
endure the hardships of new climes and 
untried lands. P^or that name thousands have 
braved death, walking in the fiery furnace, 
dying by slowly roasting in ovens, by having 
their bodies cut away piece by piece, by being 
covered with pitch and set on fire, by having 



•I 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 115 

their tongues torn out, eyes burned out, ears 
pulled from the body ; by decapitation and 
crucifixion and by every process of torture 
known to men or devils. In that name they 
have died by all these processes of torture 
with songs on their lips and with the shout 
of the victorious. In that name churches 
have been reared, school-houses built, col- 
leges and universities founded. In that name 
millions gather week by week to sing, to pray, 
to preach. And in that name life is made 
beautiful to the lowly, bearable and bright to 
the suffering and unfortunate, full of wealth 
to the poor, victorious to the weakest, and 
death becomes the twilight of an endless 
morning. 

Who is this for whom there is such wealth 
of homage ? Who is this whose praise is 
sung the world wide? Who is this who has 
such love and devotion and whose monument 
is civilization itself ? 

Many centuries ago a Son was born in Beth- 
lehem of Judea. For the thirty years follow- 
ing, He lived in obscurity and quiet in Naza- 
reth, and followed in a modest way the calling 
of a carpenter. For the three years there- 
after. He went up and down the land of Pal- 



116 THE SEEN FAITH. 

estine preaching the gospel of the kingdom, 
and healing diseases. At the end of that 
short ministry, and when only about thirty- 
four years of age, He was crucified as an 
imposter between two thieves, by the Jews, 
and with the consent of the Roman govern- 
ment. His name is the one which is above 
every name this day, and he is the one who 
has become the very essence of civilization, 
and the One for whom the millions are ready 
to die. His name is the name of Jesus. 

There is a cause for every effect, and con- 
sequently there must be a cause for the eleva- 
tion of this one to such dizzy heights. Every 
effect must have a cause of sufficient power 
to be able to produce the effect, and conse- 
quently, there must have been, and there must 
still be a sufficiency of power about this one 
to be able to produce such far reaching and 
powerful results. No analysis of the elements 
which entered into the life of Jesus, which 
does not allow for a sufficiency of resources 
to have brought about such tremendous re- 
sults, is the correct analysis. And no analysis 
of that life which does not take into account 
the astounding fact that the power of that life 
is increasing day by day in its hold on human- 



JESUS 7 HE CHRIST. 117 

ity, and in its influence on the destiny of the 
world can be the correct analysis. Where 
then is the truth concerning this one of whom 
jMoses and the prophets spake, and who has 
occupied so large a place in, and has had so 
very much to do with the history of the world ? 

The text presents to us Jesus questioning 
the disciples as to the estimate of the world, and 
finally as to what estimate they put upon His 
life. Here it seems as though we have a 
beautiful and concise statement as to the esti- 
mate which Jesus put upon His own life, and 
also an estimate which is sufficient to account 
for all the phenomena which has followed 
Him and is following hard after that name 
today. The first half of the estimate is in his 
own words ; the second half is in the words 
of Peter and was so true in the mind of Jesus 
that He called Peter blessed and told him that 
he had this estimate as a revelation from the 
Father and not from flesh and blood. In 
answering the question of today, who was 
Jesus, we can find none better than this. 

We will consider first the admission of 
Jesus as given in the language of Peter, 
"-' Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living 
God." This sermon is to be considered by 



118 THE SEEN FAITH, 

no means as an argument, but rather as a 
statement of belief. We accept the Scriptures 
as the Word of God and so are prepared to 
accept their statement as final. Here we look 
to find such statement concerning Jesus as 
will enable us to have a correct idea of Him, 
and we also expect to find here such expla- 
nation of His life as will adequately account 
for its transcendent phenomena and subse- 
quent influence. This statement of Peter's 
embodies the truth that this One was none 
other than God. If this be correct, we have 
an explanation sufficient for all things per- 
taining to His life and the wonderful works 
which do still follow. Unless it be true, we 
can understand nothing. All is dark when 
we come to explore this tremendous field, 
unless we understand Jesus, the Christ to have 
been, or rather to be, very God. Jesus Him- 
self said but little directly about His being 
divine, but He called Peter blessed for saying 
that he was the Son of God. To Philip He 
said, He was in the Father and the Father 
in Him and that whosoever had seen Him 
had seen the Father. To the high priest 
just before the crucifixion He does not deny, 
when being questioned, that He is the Son of 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 119 

God. The Jews understood Him to say that 
He was God, and on that ground they tried to 
stone Him to the death. He forgave sin 
which none but God could do. He allows 
Himself to be worshiped, which would have 
been sin itself for anyone but God. He did 
miracles which none but God has the power to 
do. Others had worked miracles, but they 
had done this in delegated strength and not of 
themselves ; this One works miracles in His 
own name and by His own power. He 
declared that He existed before Abraham, 
and the Apostle John states that He was in 
the beginning, and that He was God. 

Looking back through the prophesies of the 
Old Testament we find the hope held out 
that God would some day come to the earth 
to make an atonement for sin. That He 
would come as the Messiah. Jesus took to 
Himself these prophecies and admitted that 
He was the One who should come and that 
He was the Messiah. After His crucifixion 
He rose from the grave and thereby demon- 
strated the truth of all He had said before 
His death and thereafter none of His disciples 
doubted that He was God. 

But better than all this, if we are looking 



120 THE SEEN FAITH, 

for evidence to prove His Divinity, is the 
works which do follow Him. Eighteen cen- 
turies have gone by since He has been visibly 
present to the world, and who can account for 
the works done in His name today except it 
be on the ground that He has ascended and 
is now the omnipresent Lord according to His 
promise. And who could be an omnipresent 
Lord except the Lord of Lords and God of 
Gods. To those who may doubt the Divinity 
of Jesus, point not to the claims made for 
Him in the Gospels so much as to ask them to 
account for the wonderful activities and ac- 
complishments of His church in His name 
throughout the centuries. Jesus the Christ 
in prophesy and gospel and epistle has as- 
cribed to Him the attributes of God ; He 
did the works of God, and by millions He 
is worshiped this day as God. Yes this One 
was God, and it is no wonder that He 
has won and is winning the loves of men 
and thereby their lives although flesh and 
blood do not hold outward communion with 
Him longer. Our faith claims Him and our 
spirit holds blessed communion with Him and 
our hearts crown Him Lord. As to Peter, 
Jesus said, '^ Blessed art thou for flesh and 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 121 

blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
Father, which is in Heaven," so He will say 
to us who, without the revelation of flesh and 
blood, own Him as the Son of God through 
the inner revelation of the Father, who Jesus 
said would come and abide with those who 
would love Him and keep his commandments. 
Jesus said much about Himself as the Son of 
Man, but He leaves the fact of His being the 
Son of God for the inner revelation of the 
Father. And so perfect is this inner revela- 
tion of Jesus as God that the majority of those 
who are His would sooner doubt the existence 
of the Son of Man on earth than to doubt 
that He was the Son of God who was God. 

But we have another fact before us which 
must enter into the answer as to who Jesus 
was. This is the language of Jesus to Peter 
when He said, '^ Whom do men say that I, the 
Son of man, am ?" We have considered the fact 
that in Peter's answer to the question person- 
ally, in calling Him the Son of God he under- 
stood it to mean nothing less than God. Now 
we have before us another expression, viz., 
*' The Son of Man," for consideration. As 
truly as the former expression was understood 
by the Jews to mean the very God, just as 



122 THE SEEN FAITH. 

surely was this expression understood to mean 
nothing other than The Man. As one referred 
to the Divinity of Jesus, so this other refers to 
Kis humanity. If one means that He was 
perfect God, so the other means that He was 
perfect man. 

What, do you mean that in this one person 
there was perfect God and perfect man ? That 
is what the text means, and that is what it 
meant to those who Hstened to it for the first 
time. ^'But how could these things be?" How 
could God be any way ? Tell me the mystery 
of the Divine and I will tell you the mystery 
of the incarnation, of the God-man. The 
Jews had been looking for the advent of "the 
Son of Man " for generations. They had 
been looking for some man to arise who 
should bring them temporal deliverance, and 
establish for them a temporal kingdom which 
should exist forever. To them the Son of 
man meant a deliverer and one who should 
be perfectly man. Jesus immediately says 
that He is the one for whom they are look- 
ing, and taking up the prophesy of the past. 
He calls himself perfect Man, or Son of Man. 
It is of interest here to notice that there is in 
the Old Testament, two perfect lines of proph- 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 123 

esy. One that prohpesies of the coming down 
of Jehovah to deliver man from sin. The 
coming of God who should bring Israel and all 
mankind out from the darkness of sin into the 
light of Heaven. The other line of prophesy- 
that prophesies of the coming of a man, born 
of the seed of a woman, liaving the likeness of 
other men, and entering into their experiences 
and dying for their deliverance. This com- 
ing of God and coming of man, found both 
their fulfillment in the one person of Jesus, 
the Christ. Jesus, the Christ, the perfect God, 
but no less the perfect Man. A mystery? Yes ; 
but none the less a fact, and a fact that brings 
glad rest to troubled souls. If Jesus had 
been only God, He could not have come so 
close to us. He could not in reality have 
borne our sorrows and entered into our temp- 
tations. Had He been only perfect Man, He 
could not have delivered us from our sinful 
bondage. But as perfect God and perfect 
Man, He satisfies the longing of the soul and 
gives us peace. 

The fact we desire to emphasize today is, 
that Jesus is perfect Man. As perfectly 
human as any man here this day. There is 
a perfect Divine side to His being, but there 



124 THE SEEN FAITH. 

is also a perfect human side. His mother, 
Mary, was as thoroughly a woman as any 
woman. Thus He was born of a woman. 
He was cared for just as thoroughly as any 
infant. He grew as other boys grow, and ate 
and slept and doubtless raced and romped 
and played as they did. He learned of God 
and of religion at His mother's knee, and 
came to know the Scriptures by definite pro- 
cesses of knowledge as well as others. He 
was subject to His parents and obedient to 
their commands. He learned step by step 
the trade of Joseph, His father, until He 
could carry on the business of a carpenter, 
to the meeting of the various wants, in His 
line, of the people at Nazareth. His body 
was susceptible to the wants of other bodies. 
He grew tired with labour ; He hungered 
and thirsted as other men. When He comes 
at last into His great work of the Ministry, 
this is manifested all the way through. We 
see Him so thoroughly tired out, that He 
sleeps deeply in the hinder part of a ship on 
a pillow, although the tempest seems about 
to engulf the ship and its precious freight. 
He sits down at the well of Sychar tired and 
thirsty and hungry. He sends the disciples 




JESUS THE CHRIST. 125 

for bread that He may eat. He asks a cer- 
tain woman there to draw Him water that He 
may quench His thirst. And so on through 
the record of that marvelous life, we find the 
evidences of the human elements which make 
Him man. We find manifold evidence also, 
that the humanity about Him was not simply 
that of the body. He was a human soul as 
well. He increased in wisdom, a fact which 
would never have been written if He had 
been only perfect God. He always recognizes 
a power higher than His humanity. He 
spends whole nights in prayer. He is tempted 
as other men are tempted. He bore burdens 
of Spirit as we bear them, now. He weeps 
out of the sadness of His own spirit, because 
of the sorrows of those He loves. At last 
when in the garden that night of awful 
anguish as He is bearing the sins and burdens 
of a world. His humanity seems about to 
break down while He cries, ^'If it be possible, 
Father, let this cup pass from me." And then 
as the climax of His life's work is approach- 
ing, on the cross, in that loneliness which 
comes when one in the way of duty and right 
finds themselves forsaken by those they love 
and upon whom they lean, that awful lone- 



126 THE SEEN FAITH. 

liness which no one can understand who has 
not passed through the flood, the soul sinking 
under the weight not alone of pain, but of the 
sense of awful wrong being done in making 
Him suffer, suffering because His actions 
have not been understood when if they had 
been, the world would have crowned Him 
king then and there ; suffering there, and 
wondering as the awful anguish of approach- 
ing death comes, why the Power of the 
universe does not interfere in His behalf, 
wondering as the mists of death gather round 
the intellect, why the legions of angels have 
not come for His release ; wondering and 
suffering on in the valley of that darkest of 
all shadows until there bursts from those 
parched and human lips the wail which has 
startled the world since, ^' Eloi^ Eloi^ lama 
sabachthani ? — My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me ?" These are some of the 
testimonies which are given us to attest the 
fact that this One was as perfectly human as 
we are human. 

Perfect Man and perfect God ! And these 
Two are One ! Unfathomable ? Yes : but 
not unknowable. So is your very existence 
unfathomable while not unknowable. So is all 



JESUS THE CHRIST, 127 

creation for that matter. Soon all the world 
around us will be clad in green. Bursting bud 
of leaf and flower will face us at every turn. 
The grass will grow green beneath our feet. 
The petals of flower after flower will woo in 
some way from the shafts of white sunlight 
every shade of every color with which to paint 
its cheeks, and in some way every flower after 
its kind will select from the sunlight just the 
color which suits it best and it will be the color 
it has known from its first dawn. And yet this 
new and familiar creation will pass by unno- 
ticed in so far as to be questioned, and yet 
who is there who understands it ? This life 
is full of mysteries but we cannot reject it. 
It is a fact. And so this other one that the 
perfect God and perfect Man in some way 
were One and yet that each does not infringe 
on the other though a mystery is still a fact. 
And it is a fact which the world is finding 
restful as no other fact has been or is. And 
this wondrous God-Man, Jesus the Christ, 
can and does explain all the phenomena 
which attended His life or has. followed His 
resurrection. 

And now for a few Sabbaths I want to 
present to you Jesus the Christ, the perfect 



128 THE SEEN FAITH. 

Man, as a model for your imitation. Once in 
the history of the world a Man has stood forth 
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. 
Not only was He perfectly human but He 
was humanity perfected. He is the God- 
conception of what man may become. He is 
man at his climax, and not only the perfect 
model for the Jew but for all the world. He 
came into the world to save it from sin and 
one of the ways was to give to the world a 
perfect conception of what God considers a 
perfect man to be. He revealed that and then 
asked us to imitate that conception. This is 
not all the way by which He saves from sin, 
and this was not all of His work, but it was 
a part of it and to this specific part, to 
the imitation of Jesus, I desire to call your 
attention. 

We can not imitate the Son of God, but 
we can and must imitate the Son of Man. 
And not only are we to imitate that life, but 
we are led to believe that the day will come 
when we shall come ^' unto a perfect man, unto 
the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ. ' How are we to imitate Him ? First 
of all, by knowing Him. You cannot imitate 
Him if you do not know Him. You cannot 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 129 

know Him without studying to know Him. 
Many thousands are saying this very day that 
they desire to follow Jesus and be like Him, 
but if you ask them what they mean by being 
like Him they cannot tell you. They desire 
to imitate Him they say, but if you ask them 
in what way they are trying to imitate Him 
they may say in some general way, " By being 
like Him in doing right," but that is all. "By 
doing right," do you say? But what do you 
mean by doing right ? In what way are you 
doing right and so becoming like Him ? And 
then if you ask some to do something in some 
certain way and the way Jesus did it they do 
not recognize His likeness and so refuse. 
Ah, we cannot follow His footsteps unless by 
searching we find out where they lead. Paul 
says, " Till we all come in the unity of the 
faith, and in the knowledge of the Son of 
God, unto a perfect man." We cannot expect 
the perfection without the knowledge. Peter 
exhorts those to whom he wrote to " grow in 
grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
Savior, Jesus Christ." Both Peter and Paul 
realized that proper growth into the likeness 
of the Son of Man could not be attained with- 
out a knowledge of what that likeness is. We 



130 THE SEEN FAITH. 

must study then, to know His likeness. And 
lastly, having found out the way, we are to 
walk in it. And we are to walk in the light 
as He is the Light. Mind you that this is 
the imperative duty of the Christian and they 
who are Christ's should find it the sweetest 
thing of life to imitate His likeness and to 
grow up into His stature that they may some 
day awake in His likeness satisfied. 

Oh, so many of us are so desirous of fol- 
lowing our own whims and walking along the 
pathway of our own preconceived notions that 
in time we come to think that that is the way 
Christ walked and that we are attaining His 
likeness ! This was not the conception of the 
grand old Christian hero, Paul. It was not 
by considering His own likeness that He was 
to be changed into the likeness of his Master 
whose slave he rejoiced to be. Listen to his 
matchless eloquence : "' But we all, with open 
face beholding as in a glass the glory of the 
Lord, are changed into the same image from 
glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the 
Lord." Friend, study to know the likeness 
of Jesus and then strive to imitate it, as the 
student of art sits at the easel and copies a 
work of a master. Day by day she looks at 



11 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 131 

the copy and plies the brush to her canvas. 
Day by day the picture grows. The closer 
she studies the copy the more perfect the pic- 
ture she makes. There are days of weary 
work, of corrections where mistakes have been 
made, of a change in the shading here, of a 
change of the lines of a figure there, but day 
by day it grows and it grows more and more 
like the copy. At last it is finished and none 
but the artist knows which is the imitation 
and which the work of the Master. So should 
we study and work. Only our study and 
works should be the imitation of the life of 
Him who knew no sin and who lived that we 
might be like Him at last. 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 

Text : Luke II : 49. '^ How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye 
not that I must be about my Father's business ?" 

We are a race of imitators. The baby that 
sits on the floor and coos and laughs and tries 
to talk, imitates the other children round it. 
The boy begins to imitate the father, the girl 
the mother, very early in life. The boy never 
gets through imitating some one whether he 
knows it or not. The girl never gets through 
imitating some one whether she knows it or 
not. As the young lady, she wears her hat 
and cuts her dress as some one else does. 
The young man, the young woman, the man, 
the woman, will wait and see what the fashion 
is before they buy their spring supply of goods. 
A great sad comment on human nature this 
waiting to see what the fashion is before we 
act. And yet we all do it. If our progenitors 
were not monkeys we are certainly apes. 
Fashion is the god society worships. How 
many disagreeable things one vnll do to be in 
the fashion. The decrees of fashion are as 
merciless as the fates and one must throw 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 183 

herself before the Juggernaut of fashion to 
be crushed to powder if the god decrees it. 
Oh, that we would worship the real, true God, 
as we worship fashion ! Give to Him one- 
tenth part of the money sacrificed to fashion, 
give to Him one-tenth part of the time given 
to it ; give Him one-tenth part of the sacri- 
fice made for it, and endure one tenth part 
of the disagreeable things that we endure for 
fashion, and this world would be His in a 
score of years But it is hard to do that, for 
it is in us to imitate, and we must follow in 
fashion's wake, let come what will. 

But it is not sinful to be in the fashion. 
To be in the fashion means simply to fashion 
yourself after another's pattern, to imitate 
some one else, and imitation is not wrong. 
It is not imitation that makes for wrong, 
but what we imitate. What we imitate and 
what we do that we may imitate, that is that 
which makes for wrong or right here. Up 
to a certain limit it is all right to follow fashion, 
beyond that limit it is all wrong. It is all 
wrong to follow fashion, if in following fashion 
one must needs do sin or sacrifice a nobler 
cause. It is all right to imitate a good man's 
goodness. Paul set the fashion for some of 



134 THE SEEN FAITH. 

his churches and then boldly asked them to 
follow the pattern which he had set. One of 
the best things a young man can do is to read 
the biography of great and good men. But 
in imitating a good man's goodness it is all 
wrong if you must do wrong to so imitate 
him. It was a grand thing for a certain cen- 
turian to build a synagogue, but it would be 
all wrong for you to build one if you must 
needs sell all you have and turn your family 
into the streets to do it. 

It is all wrong for you to imitate a bad 
man's wickedness,but this goes without saying. 
Two things are to be considered in imitation, 
what you imitate, and how you imitate ! 

One thing farther here, do not forget that you 
are becoming in your very soul fibre like that 
which you imitate. Imitate no one and no 
thing, until you have decided whether or not 
you are willing to become like them. Never 
imitate anything without you have Heaven in 
view. Rather be fashionable in Heaven than 
on earth, and the way the world goes, you 
can not be in fashion in all things in both 
places at the same time. That woman who 
never purchases but two bonnets a year that 
she may give the price of the other two to the 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 135 

Lord's work, may be out of fashion two sea- 
sons of the year on earth, but she is gloriously 
in fashion in Heaven. Heaven is not so very 
far away but what if we should have our spirit- 
ual eyes opened, we might see the heavenly 
hosts. Better be in fashion in the eyes of those 
there, and of Him who sits upon the throne, 
than in the eyes of those here and not in fash- 
ion there. You are building for eternity, so 
do not build of wood, nor hay, nor stubble, nor 
always after Mrs. Grundy's pattern. 

Since we must imitate something and some 
one, we should always imitate the best possi- 
ble. This world has only seen one best in the 
way of some one to imitate. That One is 
no other than Jesus, the Christ. To imi- 
tate Him, to make Him our daily companion, 
to study His character, to look at His image, 
to grow like Him, this is not only the duty of 
humanity but it is the highest privilege the 
world knows. 

It is to one factor of that life I would call 
your attention this morning, as one of the 
lines along which we should move in our 
imitation of Him. It is to this. He had a 
definite purpose in living and it was a pur- 
pose which took hold on Heaven. 



136 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Our text is taken from the life of Jesus 
when He was but twelve years of age. His 
parents had been down to Jerusalem to the 
passover. They had started out on their 
return to their home in Galilee, and in some 
way Jesus was left behind. After a day's 
journey they seek Him among the com- 
pany but do not find Him and so return to 
Jerusalem. They spend three days of anx- 
ious inquiry when at last He is discovered 
in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doc- 
tors, listening to their conversation and ask- 
ing them questions. When reproached by 
His parents for causing them so much trouble 
He makes answer to them in the language of 
the text, ^' How is it that ye sought me, wist 
ye not that I must be about my Father's busi 
ness ?" Already He was coming to the con- 
sciousness that there was a work for Him to 
do and that He must be getting ready for it. 
From all sources He was thus early en- 
deavoring to find out the way, the truth and 
the life, which He himself was to become to 
the world. But He returns to Nazareth with 
His parents and there increases in wisdom as 
He grows in stature, and meets favor with 
both God and man. 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 137 

The idea of the answer made by Jesus to 
His parents was, that He had a purpose in 
living, and that He thought it time to be about 
it. He considered that a sufficient excuse for 
His tarrying behind and causing His parents 
so much uneasiness. The purpose of His life 
was opening before Him. It had taken pos- 
session of Him. Whether He knew at that 
time just what His mission was we do not know, 
but we do know that He was confident that 
He had not come into this world on an excur- 
sion of pleasure ; that there was a reason for 
His being here and that He should get at 
work to carry it out. No matter what the 
world may think of Jesus, that idea stayed 
with Him all through the thirty-four years of 
His life and it made His life the power it be- 
came in the world. It never left Him until 
He gave His life a ransom for many. It made 
it possible for Him to die on the cross. 

The first lesson we would call tc your mind 
is this : As Jesus had before Him a purpose 
in life, so should you have. There is a work 
for every one to do in this life. No man has 
come into this world for naught. He may 
fail to do the work assigned him. He may 
make a failure of life, But the fact is no less 

xo 



138 THE SEEN FAITH. 

true that there is as truly a reason in the 
mind of God for the presence here of every 
man, as there was a reason for the presence 
of Jesus. The Lord in going away left the 
kingdom to His servants, and to every man 
his work. Not to every rhan some work, nor 
to every man a work, but to every man his 
own work. Every man has a definite part to 
play in the great plan of God. No man is so 
poor in intellectual possesions, or in riches, 
or in rank, as to be left out. There is a 
definite pathway marked out for all to walk 
in. We are all on business for the King of 
Heaven. Would that we might get such an 
idea of what this means that we would cry out 
against any interruption, '' Wist ye not that I 
must be about my Father's business?" 

To have a purpose in life makes the differ- 
ence in great measure between man an^d man. 
It is the father of energy. Notice the boy 
who is purposeless. He is the listless boy. 
The boy who is drifting with the tide. The 
boy who is driven about with every wind of 
doctrine. The boy who is the despair of the 
household ; who never seems to amount to 
much. You can't get his attention fixed on 
anything. He goes to school because it is 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 139 

the way of the world or because his parents 
make hun. He goes to work because there 
is a necessity for it that he may find a sus- 
tenance. But work is a drudgery ; the sun 
is always too hot, the wind too severe, the 
rain disagreeable, the winter too cold, and 
life in general is a bore. Purposeless as life 
goes on, he does not see the use of living, and 
he becomes a curse to himself, if not to all he 
meets. But let a definite purpose seize him, 
or let him seize a definite purpose, and how 
quickly everything is changed. You can tell 
it in the very step ; in the uplifted head, the 
resolute expression of the countenance, the 
firmly compressed lips, the flash of the eye. 
There is energy suiificient now. Everything 
he meets thrills at his touch. Life becomes 
beautiful and the elements seem to fight for 
him instead of against him as heretofore. 
The very stars always seem to be in league 
with every man who is waging war with a defi- 
nite purpose. It becomes the means by which 
he is to accomplish his purpose and is there- 
fore his friend. Energy is characteristic of 
the boy or man with a purpose. 

Purpose is the mother of sincerity. To be 
sincere is to be noble. Carlyle calls it one of 



140 THE SEEN FAITH, 

the elements, if not the element, of greatness. 
To be sincere is to be excused for many faults. 
Saul was very faulty, but he was desperately 
sincere before his conversion, and his perse- 
cution of the Christians has always been 
excused in great degree on the ground that 
he was smcere. Sincerity does not neces- 
sarily make a man right but it makes him seem 
right. The man with a purpose that takes 
hold of him cannot help but be sincere. He 
could not have an all consuming purpose 
without being sincere. 

Within certain limits purpose is the pre- 
ventative of crime. Our criminals are our 
purposeless classes. Of course we mean a 
purpose which lays hold on life and not a 
purpose for the hour, for even the laziest of 
criminals must have had a purpose or he 
would not have stolen the boots. Ninety per 
cent of all the criminals of England at a cer- 
tain date not long ago were men who had no 
sufficiently definite purpose to have defined 
itself in a trade or a profession. If you 
want to keep that boy of yours out of mis- 
chief see to it that he has a purpose in living. 
If you can not discover one for him, and 
he does not discover one for himself, pray 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 141 

God that He will give him one, for God has 
a purpose in view for us all. And on his hav- 
ing a purpose depends in great part his 
salvation. 

Purpose marks out the limits within which 
ability is to expend itself. It gives direction 
to life. It points out the goal to w^hich you 
are to come if you succeed. It gives color to 
the man. It gives dignity to life. The man 
who has a purpose in life and realizes it, 
always moves with his head erect. You can 
see it in the poise of the frame, in the way he 
moves among men. Purpose removes moun- 
tains, stops the mouths of lions, quenches 
the violence of fire, lifts burdens, cures sor- 
rows, gives heart's ease for heart's ache. Pur- 
pose never says I can't, but always stands at 
last on the summit. It transforms life in 
every way and paints the color of the rain- 
bow on the dark cloud of earth's experiences. 

Every one has a purpose for his living ; 
every one should comprehend it and choose 
the pathw^ay in which to work It out. Let our 
lives touch that of Jesus, the Christ at this 
point until we are replying to every interrupt- 
tion, "Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business." 



142 THE SEEN EAITH, 

The second lesson we would present to you 
is this, Jesus', purpose was one purpose and so 
yours should be. Life is too short for the 
perfection of many purposes. When Jesus 
died at the age of thirty-four His age was that 
of the average life of man. He took thirty 
years for preparation and only four years for 
the accomplishing of His purpose. Those 
four years were time sufficient for Him to fin- 
ish His work. It was long enough but not 
one day too long. So will your life be long 
enough for you to finish your work but it will 
be none too long. You will not have time 
sufficient in which to finish two lofty purposes. 
Though you live to be three score years and 
ten you will not have very much time when 
you give twenty-five of those years to sleep 
and not less than nine years in eating and 
recreation. Have one purpose and make that 
a life purpose. Be successful at one thing 
rather than unsuccessful at many. Make it 
a rule not to begin a second great purpose 
until you have finished the first and if that 
purpose has been a lofty one you will never 
begin a second. Millions of lives are wrecked 
on the rocks of many purposes. Millions are 
cursing themselves, their neighbors and their 



A PURPOSE IN' LIFE. 143 

God this day because they have whiffled 
around from one thing to another until the 
day of their probation was passed and failure 
was staring them in the face. But one pur- 
pose was before Jesus when standing at the 
bench making doors or window frames for His 
neighbors. But it was a purpose of sufficient- 
ly loftiness of character to possess His whole 
soul. There was no room there for anything 
else. There should be no room in the mind 
of any one to have under contemplation more 
than one purpose. There is not room suffi- 
cient in any mind that is human. Let the 
one purpose rule you, let it fill your soul, let 
it meet your love and when you come to die 
you will not have lived in vain. 

And do not get impatient waiting for that 
purpose to mature. Do not get in too great 
haste to finish your work. In our head- 
long rush in America we are forgetting some 
essential things and are making some blun- 
ders. We want success early to crown our 
efforts and then we want to retire and take 
our ease. Retire when there is so much to 
do ? Retire when there are so few who are 
willing to do it ? Retire when we are in full 
possession of our powers ? At fifty we should 



144 THE SEEN FAITH, 

only be on the threshold of our life's work. 
The twenty years from fifty to seventy are 
worth more than the thirty from twenty to 
to fifty for actual labor. How absurd the 
feeling that comes to many at fifty that their 
life's work is nearly done. That idea is tak- 
ing much of the pleasure and the usefulness 
out of life. We came in contact with a young 
man of thirty-five the other day who said that 
his life was a failure because he had started all 
wrong and was just taking up a new line of 
work which he ought to have taken up at 
twenty. Think of the absurdity of a young 
man of thirty*five thinking his life a failure 
when a quite possible thirty-five years of use- 
fulness yet lies before him. We demonstrated 
to him that he might take the next five years 
in preparation and then be ready to do a 
grand work for the cause of humanity. He 
went away with a new light in his eyes. Make 
up your mind that you will be more useful at 
fifty and onward than you can be before. Do 
not be too anxious to be called precocious. 
Do not get in too great a hurry to graduate 
from the high school. Take time. Rather 
be thorough than be a prodigy. Get ready. 
Lay a broad foundation. Do not stand in 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE, 145 

awe of that sentiment which takes off its hat 
to the college graduate of eighteen and passes 
by the one of thirty. Nor for that sentiment 
which is all the while calling for young men 
and passing by the old men. One sentence 
of Theodore Cuyler is worth more for real 
weight than two of any of our brilliant young 
men. One word at fifty will weigh more than 
two thousand words at thirty. More than 
one king, more than one client, more than 
one church has found that while young men 
were excellent for action under direction, 
the old men were best for giving the direction. 
Take time for the maturing of your pur- 
pose. Take time for the preparation. Take 
the whole period of your years for the prepar- 
ation while you are bringing your purpose to 
maturity. Never get too old to learn and 
you will never have to retire on account of 
your uselessness. Always be in a state of 
preparation and you will make your useful- 
ness cumulative. Then the dead line of your 
life will only be reached when some one will 
say, '^ Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust," over your coffin. Too great hurry and 
too little preparation brings the dead line of 
life twenty years before the burial takes place. 



146 THE SEEN EAITH. 

No one passes such on the street but what 
they whisper to themselves fragments of the 
burial service. Heaven's gate will open wide 
to the useful man, to the busy man, to the 
tired out man. Jesus' '^ come " was unto 
those who were heavy laden with labour. 

Heaven's rest will not be appreciated by a 
good many. They never tire themselves 
out in fulfilling any purpose in this life. 
Already they have turned the Heaven of rest 
in this life, into the hell of listless, purpose- 
less, self-dissatisfaction. The faculties of the 
soul which have nothing upon which to 
expend themselves, always begin to prey upon 
themselves. Insanity is often the outcome 
of this The torture of a hungry stomach 
which begins to digest its own walls, is nothing 
in comparison to the torture of a hungry soul, 
which for want of something else, preys upon 
itself. Keep busy. Do not be in a hurry to 
retire. Let your purpose take you as Christ's 
did him, up to the cross, or the sepulcher. 
Lay your burden down at the feet of death. 
Let your last shout be, ^' It is finished." 

The third and final lesson we would pre- 
sent to you is this, as Jesus' purpose laid hold 
on Heaven, so should yours. ^* Wist ye not 



A PURPOSE IIV LIFE. 147 

that I must be about my Father's business," 
was His answer. He felt that He was sent 
to do business for eternity, and His eyes were 
on the throne of the universe. His purpose 
passed through this vale of tears. It rested 
like an anchor on the golden sands. No 
wonder His life appears so noble. No won- 
der His earnestness was so intense. No 
wonder He could endure the trials and per- 
secutions of this life. No wonder it possessed 
such force. No purpose is sufficiently lofty 
which does not lay hold of Heaven like His. 
No purpose should ever be the ruling prin- 
ciple of our lives, which does not come under 
the head of the Father's business. Jesus' life 
work was no more marked out of God than 
yours. Though infinitely greater in degree. 
His purpose was still the same in kind as 
yours. His work and your work is the 
Father's work. The supreme purpose of 
every life should be to do the Father's will. 
Nothing less ; nothing other. '' Wist ye not 
that I must be about my Father's business," 
should be our answer to every temptation, 
which would lead us from that pifrpose. Oh, 
if man would only realize the dignity of his 
position ! That he is not sent into this world 



148 THE SEEN FAITH. 

to work in the dirt and mire of the earth's 
business with no other outlook than the earthly 
hills with which he is environed! If he could 
and would only realize that he was made but 
little lower than the angels, that he is on this 
earth on business for the God of this universe 
and that he shall some day judge angels ! 
We learn in this world to honor one who is 
on the business of the Governor or President, 
and we are just as surely on the business of 
the King of kings. It should be the ruling 
passion of our lives to do the work of Him who 
sent us. He has given to every man his work. 
No one is left out of His business. 

Yet it seems as though we were making this 
business of our King, this work of our Father, 
of secondary importance. That we who are 
professed followers of His are making purposes 
which are entirely earthly, our first business. 
This business of ours which must some day be 
left with no works to follow us into eternity ; 
this business which is of the earth, earthy ; and 
of the dirt, dirty. Endeavoring to lift this up 
to the first position not knowing that we are 
not lifting it at all, but that it is dragging us 
down ; belittling us ; making us no better 
than it is itself. Oh, man, how art thou fallen ! 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 149 

Mistaking stones for bread, gilt for gold, 
paste for diamonds and earth for Heaven ! 
Parading in the skin of an ass and thinking it 
to be the livery of angels ! Lift up thine eyes 
to the hills ! Friend, what are you in this 
world for any way ? Tell us. Let me tell 
you. God has given you a work to do. Do 
it ; make it the first business of your life to 
do His will. 

Think of the transforming power of such a 
motive. No wonder this purpose transformed 
the life of Jesus. No wonder that it has 
transformed the visage of thousands since. 
Cromwell was transformed from a farmer and 
a quiet representative to a majestic warrior 
and president of all England by a lofty pur- 
pose. How this loftiest of all purposes 
would uplift us if we would only let it take 
hold of us ! Jesus ascended and so might we 
if we would become married to the purpose 
of doing His will. 

How many are making it the first business 
of their lives to get rich. Measuring their 
purposes by the length and breadth and height 
of this earth alone and by a sufficiently small 
atom of a fragment of time as to be unnotice- 
able in measurement with the thousands of 



150 THE SEEN FAITH. 

years. Think of a soul which has become 
sufficiently narrowed down ; which has become 
sufficiently degraded ; which has become 
sufficiently infinitesimal as to make it its first 
business to get rich in the accumulated dirt 
of a perishable world. 

What most naturally will be the last words 
of those dying? That which has been most 
uppermost in their minds through life. A 
miser lay dying who had been a professed 
follower of Jesus all his life but whose supreme 
purpose had been to get rich. My father was 
the attending physician. The old man lay 
upon the bed, his white locks, whitened by 
the frosts of over eighty winters, pushed back 
from a noble brow, his hands bleached by 
sickness clasped over his breast, and above 
the coverlid, the firm lips slightly parted, the 
eyelids closed, as slowly but surely he was 
breathing his last Weeping loved ones had 
gathered round to catch the last words if such 
there should be, or obtain once more some 
faint recognition. My father knelt by the bed- 
side and taking one of his hands in his he 
asked him if he should pray. A slight press- 
ure was the only response. The prayer was 
offered and then father sang a hymn which 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE, 151 

had been the old man's favorite. As he closed 
the song, the eyes of the dying one opened, 
the friends pressed closely to the bedside, his 
lips moved and father bending over him asked 
him if there was anything he wanted. He 
spoke one short sentence, then his chin 
dropped, the eyes opened wider, the breath 
stopped and he was dead. What was that 
last sentence ? It was this, " I want a dollar." 
Strange consolation for loved ones. Yet that 
sentence was the very incarnation of the su- 
preme object of his life. It is not possible to 
press within a smaller compass the very pith 
of the mercenary spirit. A wonderful sen- 
tence for a dying man face to face with eter- 
nity. What an epitaph for a tomb stone. Is 
that to be your last sentence ? Thy money 
perish with thee ! 

But is it not right to get rich ? That is not 
the question. That man is a sinner against 
himself ; against a community and against 
God whose only object in life is to get rich. 
But if his object be to do his Master's will, 
to be about his Father's business and he 
makes money to enable him to carry on his 
Father's business, then he has consecrated his 
talents to the King, absorbed his wealth in 



152 THE SEEN FAITH. 

the lofty purposes of Heaven and is turning 
money of earth into the bank stock of Eternity. 
Such is of the Heaven, Heavenly. 

What has been said about the money get- 
ting can be said equally as well of every other 
motive or purpose other than the one supreme 
purpose of doing the Father's business, The 
purposes which are earthly are only right 
when we have made them secondary and a 
means for doing the Father's will. The far 
reaching purpose of our lives should be to do 
the work committed to our hands by the 
Father. Then no matter what we do in this 
life. Whether we work at day labour with 
Jesus, or in the wide field of commerce, or 
in professional life ; whether we sit by the 
cradle rocking the boy who will some day 
rock the world, or wash dishes in the kitchen, 
or lecture from the platform ; whether we 
make home happy and restful for the husband, 
or teach school, or work in some home for 
some other one ; no matter what we do we 
will be doing all to the glory of God. Make 
these things the means for enabling us to do 
the Father's business ; perhaps it is the only 
work He has given us to do in His vine- 
yard. Some are always wishing to know what 



A PURPOSE IN LIFE. 



153 



the Lord has given them to do, when they 
never seem to reahze that the work hes all 
around them. Some mothers are asking what 
they shall do and are wishing that they could 
do some great thing for God, when boys and 
girls are in their home to be taught and led 
in the way of Jesus, and that is the great work 
to which He has called them. God does not 
call anyone to do great things who will not do 
the little things. Many are wanting to get 
out into the great harvest field and to the 
work of saving souls before the world, who 
never think of saving souls in the byivaysand 
hedges. If you are doing the work that lies 
near at hand you are doing the work He has 
assigned you. When He wants you in the 
larger field He will call you. 

I implore you this day to make a new con- 
secration of your powers and possessions to 
the Father, that you may thereby do His will. 
Imitate Jesus in the oneness of that purpose 
which was to do the Father's business, and 
let your life's purposes touch Heaven. 

In closing let me point you to the grandest 
sentence ever spoken by one dying. So grand 
and beautiful are these words that if I thought 
they might truly be my last words I would 

u 



154 THE SEEN FAITH. 

let one glad hallelujah go up to God. They 
are the last words of Jesus, " It is finished." 
In the midst of the awful suffering, and as 
His life on earth is being finished, the 
brightest thought which comes to Him, as 
a winged angel of consolation, is, that He 
has been true to the trust given Him, and 
that though it has led Him to the cross. He 
has not faltered, and that now the work is 
done. A grand and majestic purpose and 
one that lays hold on Heaven is that, to find 
the work assigned you, and then to be loyal 
to it to the end. To the end of life and to the 
greater end of finishing that work. There is 
no other greater ! 

There is nothing grander in all Carlyle has 
written, than the words with which I close, 
and they are grand because they are in exact 
harmony with the thought of our text this 
day, ^' Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business.'' Speaking of man He 
says, ** He is born to expend every particle of 
the strength that God Almighty has given 
him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for ; 
to stand up to it to the last breath of life, 
and do his best. We are called upon to do 
that ; and the reward we all get, . which we 
are perfectly sure of if we have merited it. 



A PURPOSE IN- LIFE, 155 

is that we have got the work done, or at least 
that we have tried to do the work. For that 
is a great blessing in itself; and I should say, 
there is not very much more reward than that 
going on in this world." Friend, ^^ wnst ye not 
that you must be about your Father's busi- 
ness?" Let that thought take hold of you. 
Let it influence your life. If so, it will lift 
}^ou day by day, above the baser elements 
which characterize so many of our fellow men, 
up above the boundaries of an earthly vision, 
up, until with your ascended Lord you sit at 
the right hand of the Father, having done 
what you could for Him. 

" The future hides in it 
Gladness and sorrow ; 
We still press thorow, 
Naught that abides in it 
Daunting us, onward. 

And solemn before us, 
Veiled the dark portal ; 
Goal of all mortal ; 
Stars silent rest o'er us, 
. Graves under us silent. 

While earnest thou gazest 
Comes boding of terror, 
Come phantasm and terror ; 
Perplexing the bravest 
With doubt and misgiving ? 



156 THE SEEN EAITH. 

But heard are the voices, 
Heard are the sages, 
The worlds and the ages ; 
Choose well ; your choice is 
Brief, yet endless. 

Here eyes do regard you 
In eternities stillness 
Here is all fullness, 
Ye brave to reward you. 
Work and despair not." 

That is it, '' Work and despair not." Let 
your watchword be, '' Wist ye not that I must 
be about my Father's business," remembering 
that such need never despair. Heaven will 
be yours. 



THE SACRIFICE DEMANDED BY A 
PURPOSE. 

Text : Mark X : 45. " For the Son of man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom 
for many." 

No purpose can be accomplished without 
a sacrifice. There is no getting on and up in 
this world without it. There are no great 
victories without correspondingly great bat- 
tles in attaining them. There are no great 
heights reached without great exertions. No 
peace without a conflict. No joy without 
pain. It costs something to be something. 
Put the joy you desire to reach, in the bal- 
ances and the number of pounds it weighs 
will indicate what it will cost you to obtain 
it. Measure the purpose you would accom- 
plish and know the measure of effort before 
you start and see if you are willing to pay 
that bill. No lofty purposes are attained 
without lofty sacrifices, and the loftier the 
purpose, the loftier the sacrifice. Every cause 
has its mountain of skulls. Whosoever goes 
that way must go forth bearing his cross, and 
let him know that he must be crucified on it. 



158 THE SEEN FAITH. 

Do not envy the man who stands above you 
in any position, until you know what it has 
cost him to reach it, and the burdens he has to 
carry to hold it, and when you have found 
this out you will not envy, but you will pity. 
A certain duke who occupied a fine position 
and had a fine palace in which to live, had a 
friend come to visit him, who had not been 
so fortunate in reaching so great a height. 
Desiring to relieve his friend from any feel- 
ing of envy or regret, the duke said to him, 
** If you will stand off twenty paces and let 
me shoot at you one hundred times, I will 
give you all I possess." The friend declined 
the honor on account of the cost. The duke 
then said, '^ I was shot at one thousand times 
and at ten paces for these." 

There is an impression abroad in this land 
of wonderful achievements, that there is a way 
to get on and up without paying the bill, but 
it is a delusion and a snare of the evil one. 
That is our greatest curse. This trying to 
get up without sacrifice has resulted in a race 
of gamblers and hypocrites, in superficialities 
in every branch of life, in strikes and riots, 
in socialism and anarchy and bloodshed, and 
in a steady stream of boodlers and bankers 



1 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 159 

and treasurers headed for the North Star. 
No man is worthy the name of man who will 
not pay its legitimate sacrifice for every 
advance he makes. 

If there be no accomplishing of our pur- 
poses which are selfish and earthly, without 
sacrifices which measure equally with the pur- 
poses, how much more must the sacrifice be, 
when we enter the realm of the spiritual, and 
take hold of purposes which are eternal in 
their sweep and for God ? If you can not 
accomplish any purpose worthy of you with- 
out putting your whole life into it, then you 
certainly can not accomplish that highest of 
all purposes, that purpose to which, as you 
make your vows at the altar of God, you 
dedicated your lives, viz : the purpose of 
serving God and doing the Father's business, 
I say you cannot accomplish that purpose 
without sacrifice and without putting your 
whole life into that. You need not expect to 
serve God in the capacity of a Christian, with- 
out a sacrifice that will mean something as 
life goes on. This slip shod way of serving 
God when it does not cost us anything, or 
when we like to, or when it is convenient, is 
not worthy of men, and it certainly differs 



160 THE SEEN FAITH. 

here from the example set us by Jesus, the 
Christ, as far as it is possible for anything to 
differ. 

The grandest of men are those who have 
a purpose in living which takes hold of their 
very life and for which they are willing to 
spend their last breath. If they accomplish 
their purpose, they will have to spend their 
last breath. And I want to add still farther, 
that if you can ever say those grandest of all 
words, ^' It is finished," as you return the 
work committed to your hands by the Father, 
it will be said with your last breath. My 
theme is. The Sacrifice Demanded by a Pur- 
pose, and in support of the theme I simply 
ask you to look at Jesus, who came not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life a ransom for many. Notice, the 
text says more than that He came to die for 
many. It says He came to give His life for 
many. It means more to give one's life for 
many than to die for many. Jesus came to 
do His Father's business, and in doing His 
Father's business He gave all He had. His 
very life, and in this He becomes our example. 
I would call your attention today to the one 
fact that Jesus sacrificed His own personal 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 161 

comfort and ease that He might do His 
Father's business. After Jesus had been bap- 
tised by John in the Jordan it is written^ *^ that 
the heavens were opened unto Him, and He 
saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove 
and alighting upon Him ; and a voice was 
heard from heaven saying, This is my Beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased." Undoubt- 
edly there came to Jesus at this time the full 
consciousness of His position in history. It is 
hard to understand that Jesus must have come 
gradually to the understanding of His own 
character and work in the world, inasmuch as 
we see Him to be the God-man. We hide 
His humanity in His divinity, forgetting that 
He was perfectly man as well as perfectly God. 
But such was the case. The record to which we 
have already referred you says that He grew 
in wisdom, and without doubt the fullness of 
that wisdom, which disclosed to Him what He 
was, and the nature of the work He was to do 
in the Father's business, came to Him as the 
Spirit of God descended upon Him as a dove, 
immediately after His baptism. What a reve- 
lation that must have been to Him. What a 
widening of horizon until it took in the very 
limits of eternity. What a conception of pos- 



162 THE SEEN FAtTH, 

sibilities, as the knowledge came to Him, that 
before Abraham was, He was, and that all 
things were made by Him and that without 
Him was not anything made that was made. 
Who can understand those emotions? No one 
but God. And yet, those can come near 
enough to it to touch the hem of its garment, 
who also have awakened to the fact that they 
had a mission in this world to do, and that 
power from God would be given to them to 
do it. With this understanding it is no won- 
der that the Spirit of God led Him into 
the wilderness for contemplation that He 
might become accustomed to his new concep- 
tion, and it is no wonder that this conception 
took away all the desire for food so that He 
forgot it until forty days had passed, and it 
is no longer a wonder that He was tempted 
of the devil. Would to God that such a just 
conception of our mission in life might come 
to us, that it would be more than our meat 
and more than our drink to do the Father's 
will. 

After the forty days of contemplation had 
passed by, J esus awakes to the fact that He 
is hungry. There is no food in the wilderness, 
but as he looks around He sees the stones and 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 16B 

the thought comes to Him that with all His 
power He can turn these stones into bread 
and appease his hunger. Suppose that Jesus' 
first miracle had been that He might gratify 
His material appetite. Though it might seem 
to have been justified by the circumstances, 
yet would it not have marred, somehow the 
wonderful history of His life ? How all the 
world would be using it as an excuse now for 
seeking first bread and after that the kingdom. 
They would be using all the more than they 
now do the wonderful powers with which God 
has endowed them that they may do His 
work, in getting to themselves ease and 
comfort. 

What wonderful possibilities of ease and 
comfort must have come to Him as the tempt- 
ation came to turn those stones into bread. 
Who could have enjoyed more of it than He ? 
Who could have had a better establishment 
at Jerusalem than He ? Ay, or in the world ? 
His palace would have startled the world by 
its grandeur. He could have made the desert 
blossom as the rose, that it might serve Him 
with the choicest of fruits and flowers and 
viands of every sort. The cattle on a thou- 
sand hills were His for use. His servants 



164 THE SEEN FAITH. 

could have been numbered by the thousands 
and in addition He might have summoned 
the leg^ions of angels to fly about on His 
errands ; He might have ridden in chariots of 
gold and have been drawn by steeds such as 
the world has never seen, and ail by His own 
special creation. There is no limit for the 
imagination here except its own finiteness as 
we think what might have been for His ease 
and comfort while He was doing the Father's 
business. Think of it, you who are troubled 
when you cannot have just so many suits of 
clothes or dresses or hats or bonnets because 
you have given so much to the Father's w^ork. 
Think of it, you who give what you give of 
time or money or effort to His service in a 
grumbling spirit as you think you must make 
some infinitesimal sacrifice to do it. Think 
of it you, too, who say you will not give any 
thing of time or money or effort until some 
one else has done their duty in this way and 
carried their share of the burden. If this 
One had done in this way, who would have 
died for you, or who would have given their 
life as a ransom that you might live ? But 
with this wonderful possibility of ease and 
comfort, and such a possibility as has never 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 165 

been given to another, before Him, He sees 
that with these things of ease He can not do 
the Father's business and that the purpose of 
His life demands the sacrifice of them all, and 
He immediately refuses even to turn the stones 
into bread. Thereafter His life was one long 
sacrifice of every comfort. He turned the 
water into wine for others. He worked a 
miracle to feed others, but not for Himself. It 
was this One who said later on, ^* Foxes have 
holes and the birds of the air have their nests 
but the Son of Man has not where to lay His 
head." We have been accustomed to think 
that Jesus died to save us and we have lost 
sight of the fact that His whole life was given 
as a ransom for us. His dying was not His 
only sacrifice ; His life was a living one. 

Friend, this example of Jesus giving up all 
personal ease and comfort that He might 
accomplish His purpose, comes to you at the 
very threshold of your determination to serve 
Him. If you would serve Him, you, too, 
must begin your sacrifice right here. He says, 
^^ If any man would come after me, let him 
deny himself, take up his cross and follow 
me." You need not think you are follow- 
ing Him if you are not doing this. 



166 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Young man, young woman, you want to 
get on and up in this life, and this is a lauda- 
ble ambition, but I tell you God's own truth, 
when I say that if you will get up in this 
world in any business or in any profession, 
you will do it, and you will only do it, by 
following the examp'e that Jesus set in accom- 
plishing His purpose in life. The first step 
in getting up, along the line of any business 
whatsoever is in a determination to sacrifice 
all personal ease and comfort for the time at 
least. If you do not do this you may rest 
assured that ruin in the last days will stare 
you in the face. I heard the other day of 
two young men who had ten thousand dollars 
left them. They formed a partnership and 
invested eight thousand in a certain business, 
fitted up an office in a style fit only for a mil- 
lionaire, and not for any one less, hired two 
book-keepers to keep their books for them, 
put several men in the shop, and then they 
dressed up in elegant style to keep company 
with the style of their office, and sat down to 
wait for trade. There was the very incarna- 
tion of ease and comfort, but there was also 
the very incarnation of that which makes 
for a fool and failure. No wonder that 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 167 

the}^ failed in business in less than six months 
and had to take their place as day laborers 
in the same business where they had put 
on so much style. If they had commenced 
at the foot, and had been willing to sacri- 
fice comfort at the start, they might have 
been successful business men and found 
their ease farther on. This is but the story 
of thousands of wrecked lives. Young man, 
whether you choose to be a business man or 
a lawyer or a doctor or a minister, remember 
at the start that you will not succeed unless 
you sacrifice where Jesus sacrificed and put 
your ease and comfort on the cross and let it 
die. 

To you who have named the name of Jesus 
as your Master, this must come with full force. 
Over and over again, you have said you would 
be like Him. Over and over, you have said 
you were about your Father's business. Here 
you have an opportunity of trying to do as 
He did and thus imitate His example. At 
the beginning of your Christian life, are you 
willing to sacrifice ease and comfort that you 
may be like Him ? And yet how many excuses 
we hear on the part of the church for not serv- 
ing Him better; excuses which from a busi- 



16S THE SEEX FAITH. 

ness standpoint would not be considered for a 
moment. Think of Jesus saying when asked 
to do something for the Father, that He did 
not feel like it, or that it was too hot, or too 
cold, or that John would not do as he should 
and He would not do anything unless he did. 
Oh, where has the spirit of sacrifice gone ? 
Woe, woe unto them who are at ease in Zion ! 
** A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a 
little more folding of the hands to sleep ; so 
shall thy poverty come upon thee as one that 
travaileth and thy want as an armed man. 
Oh, my friend, let us not hear anything more 
of what you have sacrificed for Jesus until 
you can say with Him that you have not 
where to lay your head. Let us not hear 
anything more of what you have suffered for 
Him until you feel the weight of the cross 
upon your shoulders. Let us not henr any- 
thing more of what you have paid in money 
for His sake until you have given until you 
feel it. Shame, shame, shame, upon the 
Christian church, which has taken so much of 
the spirit of the age to itself as to know noth- 
ing of what sacrifice means. Think of making 
a success of any earthly purpose with the little 
effort, we will not dignify it by the name of 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 169 

sacrifice, you are making to make your life in 
Jesus a success. 

And what do you think He thinks about it ? 
Listen. ''He that loveth father and mother 
more than me, is not worthy of me : and he 
that loveth son and daughter more than me, 
is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not 
up his cross, and foUoweth after me, is not 
worthy of me." This is what He thinks. To 
be worthy of Him will take all there is of us ; 
but to be unworthy, oh, who can tell the pain ! 
But how many judged by this test are worthy 
of Him this day ? Have we not somehow 
received a wrong idea of what it means to fol- 
low Jesus ? Have we not the idea of being 
saved by justification without works, tangled 
up with the idea of His service, and are we 
not thinking that we can serve Him by justifi- 
cation without works? Are we not thinking 
that inasmuch as we are to appropriate the 
character of the Christ that we may stand 
before the Father without spot or blemish or 
any such thing and this by faith, that some- 
how faith \\\\\ take the place of discipleship, 
and that if our faith be strong we shall have 
no need of works ? Have we not forgotten 
that faith will always show itself by works ancj 

\2 



170 THE SEEN FAITH. 

that if we have no works the Bible says we 
have no faith ? Have we not a wrong idea of 
prayer ? Are we not thinking to do all things 
by prayer ? That prayer will carry on the 
Lord's work ; that it will fill a church ; preach 
sermons ; give us character ; save souls ; 
build churches ; revolutionize a community ; 
carry on missions ; take our place at prayer- 
meeting ; feed the poor; right wrongs without 
our asking any forgiveness ; Christianize the 
masses ; clothe us ; educate us ; give us a 
complete knowledge of spiritual things ; read 
our Bibles for us ; teach us its doctrines ; 
bear our crosses ; and in short make this 
earth a veritable Heaven for us in which we 
are to do nothing, but that we are to have 
white-winged and unseen angels do our work 
for us? And yet we should have learned ere 
this that while prayer is a wonderful power, it 
will never do for us in things secular and no 
more in things religious what we can do for 
ourselves. Jesus spent much time in prayer, 
but it did not prevent Him going about doing 
good ; it did not take the place of His sacri- 
fice of ease and comfort ; it did not take the 
place of the crown of thorns, or of the cross. 
I feel ashamed when I think how languidly 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED, 171 

we are serving Him. It makes one feel small 
to think of what Jesus gave up of ease and 
comfort for us and then think of how little, if 
anything, we have given up for Him. Jesus 
had one illustrious example in a follower who 
seems to me to have been worthy of his 
Master. Often I turn to the record of what 
he endured and read for comfort and inspir- 
ation, when it seems as tho' I had burdens to 
carry. I never read that without feeling 
small. Let me rehearse it for your benefit 
that you, too, may see what one who followed 
Jesus did, that he might accomplish his pur- 
pose : *• Are they ministers of Christ ? I am 
more ; in labors more abundant, in stripes 
above measure, in prisons more frequent, in 
deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received 
I forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten 
with rods once was I stoned, thrice I suffered 
shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in 
the deep ; in journeyings, often in perils of 
robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in 
perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in 
perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, 
in perils among false brethren ; in weariness 
and painfulness, in watchings often, in hun- 
ger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold 



172 THE SEEN FAITH, 

and nakedness. Besides that which cometh 
upon me daily, the care of all the churches." 
How Paul must smile to hear some of us talk 
of being tired and needmg vacations and of 
making sacrifices. x\nd yet this follower of 
Jesus sings out as he thinks of finishing his 
work and of the reward which waits at the 
end, *^ For which cause we faint not ; but 
though our outward man perish, yet the in- 
ward man is renewed day by day. For our 
light affliction, (think of Paul talking of his 
light affliction,) which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory ; while we look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the things 
which are not seen ; for the things which are 
seen are temporal ; but the things which are 
not seen are eternal." This one took up his 
cross and followed his Master. How grand 
it looks as we look back at it now. No 
wonder that this one finished his work too, 
and that his name has never been forgotten 
by posterity. Put that same devotion into 
your work, my friend, and altho' you m.ay not 
have Paul's ability, you will do a work which 
will astonish you. Suppose for the time that 
the spirit of Jesus and the spirit of Paul 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED, I'TB 

should take possession of this church and of 
you, what do you think we could not do be- 
fore this year shall end ? And what we can 
do, but tells us what we ought to do, and may 
God help us to do it. 

Did you mean, my Christian friend, what 
you said the other day, when you said 
you wanted to be like Jesus and that this 
was your greatest desire ? Show then your 
desire by your works. Not only will the 
measure of your purpose tell you how much 
of a sacrifice you must make to accomplish it, 
but the sacrifice you are making will tell the 
world how great a purpose you have in living. 
As you can measure the purpose of Jesus by 
the wonderful sacrifice He made, so you can 
measure yours. And again, you can see how 
great an estimate you have made of your 
purpose in living by the sacrifice you are 
making. And now if you meant what you 
said, in wanting to be like Jesus, here is a 
chance for you to begin to imitate Him, by 
the sacrifice of ease and comfort that you 
may do His work. Try it this week and see 
how well it works. When night comes and 
you do not feel like coming out to the even- 
ing service, remember how He sacrificed His 



174 THE SEEN FAITti. 

ease and comfort that you might be saved 
and come, perhaps y^ur example this very 
night may save a soul. When Thursday 
evening comes around and it is stormy and 
you are tempted to stay at home, think that 
He gave His life as a ransom for many, and 
that you can do no better than to give your 
life wholly to Him, and come along, perhaps 
your presence may give some one courage to 
do His work too. And so on, when you are 
tempted to leave His work undone because of 
some necessary sacrifice of ease and comfort 
think of His example and make the sacrifice, 
knowing that before you lies the reward of 
having your work done at last. 

" Light after darkness, 

Gain after loss, 
Strength after weakness, 

Crown after cross ; 
Sweet after bitter, 

Hope after fears, 
Home after wandering, 

Praise after tears. 

Sheaves after sowing, 

Sun after rain. 
Sight after mystery, 

Peace after pain ; 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 175 

Joy after sorrow, 

Calm after blast, 
Rest after weariness. 

Sweet rest at last. 

Near after distant. 

Gleam after gloom, 
Love after loneliness, 

Life after tomb ; 
After long agony. 

Rapture of bliss. 
Right was the pathway, 

Leading to this." 



THE SACRIFICE DEMANDED BY A 
PURPOSE. 

Text: Mark X:45. '' For the Son of Man came not to be minis- 
tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many," 

A model for imitation is nearly a necessity 
in every sphere of life's activities. The school 
lad with his copy book, the builder with his 
architectural plans are fair examples of 
humanity at large. That remarkable creature 
who needs no plans in life, who looks to no 
one for measurement, whose own fertile brain 
discovers and originates its models in fields 
secular and religious, who asks no odds of 
any man, though often proclaimed, is never 
to be found on searching. No such person 
exists. There never was but one such. There 
will be no duplicate. If models are needed 
in every department of living except in the 
realm of morals, think you that in this field 
there should be an exception ? You may 
think so, but God does not. In the midst of 
the years He has set up a standard that the 
world might know how to live rightly. He 
gave us no law which could not be worked over 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 177 

into life, and that we might understand this, 
He turned the righteousness of Heaven into 
life incarnate in flesh and blood, and placed 
it here on earth. Through the book of flesh 
we can now translate the morals of Heaven, 
so that we are without excuse for not know- 
ing them, and on that ground God com- 
mandeth man everywhere to repent. There 
is no use for farther quibble over what is 
right in morals. The principles have become 
flesh and dwelt among us, and we have 
beheld their glory as of the only begotten 
Son of God. Thank God for this model of 
righteousness ! Oh, how restless this cease- 
less searching after the right way to build 
character ! Not knowing, having searched, 
that you have found the way, the truth, the 
life ! Impelled by an intuitional conviction 
that there is a right way somewhere ! Coming 
at last to something you think will make for 
righteousness, but which, alas, turns out not 
to work well, and is useless ! And then you 
discover that you have been making character 
all the while you have been searching, and 
that that character is fixed. This awful fact 
that character will not wait in its formation, 
but that from babyhood to old age it is form- 



1*78 THE SEEN FAITH, 

ing for weal or woe, argues with the weight 
of Heaven for an understanding on the thresh- 
old of life, what makes for righteousness. 
But the necessity for searching has gone by 
forever. The model in righteousness has 
come, and has stood the crucical gaze of 
nineteen centuries, This model appeals to 
you today, this God incarnate, this Jesus, the 
Christ ; He challenges your investigation and 
invites your imitation. 

The last sermon delivered to you on 
The Imitation of Jesus, was on, ^' The Sac- 
rifice Demanded by a Purpose." But one 
point was presented and that was that Jesus 
sacrificed His personal ease and comfort that 
He might accomplish his purpose and so should 
we, if our purposes are accomplished. Begin- 
ning where the subject was left we present 
to you some additional points on the same 
general and special theme. 

Second : Jesus sacrificed all display for 
personal aggrandizement, that He might ac- 
complish the end for which He came into the 
world. As the newborn consciousness comes 
to Him, after the baptism of the Holy Ghost 
descends upon Him at the Jordan, that He is 
none other than God incarnate, His humanity 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. \1^ 

was immediately attacked at one of the weak- 
est points, a love of display for personal gain. 
He understood this weakness of humanity 
better than we can ever know it and He knew 
that popularity immediate and on a grander 
scale than had ever been known before or 
would ever be known again, could be His, by 
exercising His power along this line. What 
could He not do for the astonishment of the 
world. Right here the devil enters into the 
contest and offers the suggestion that He go 
back to the temple at Jerusalem, climb to the 
highest pinnacle and cast Himself down. It 
would be a grand sight and such an one as no 
one had ever witnessed. No juggler of the 
East had such power as He, and here He 
could surpass them all. This would appeal 
to the weakness of the world and He would 
immediately gain a following of tremendous 
proportions. Ah, how wily the devil is. He 
knew well that if he could get Jesus the Christ 
to start out on a career of astonishing the 
world with His newly acquired powers, for 
personal ends, that he would completely 
overthrow all the plans of Heaven for the sal- 
vation of the world. But this temptation does 
not disturb the mind of our Heavenly Model 



180 THE SEEN FAITH. 

long. He turns and says to the tempter, '^ It 
is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God." After that it comes to Him no more 
as a temptation, and we see no act of His 
which can be condemned as a display of 
power for personal ends. No miracle which 
He performed came under this head. Those 
which He performed were to certify to 
His Heavenly mission and to enable Him to 
carry on the great work for which He came 
into the world. Over and over again the 
people would give Him occasion to manifest 
His powers simply for display, and that their 
desire for something novel might be granted, 
but He yields to none. Herod, so we read, was 
glad that Jesus was to be brought before him 
that he might see some sign of wonder done 
by Him, but Jesus did not grant him so much 
as a word of wonder. 

We can scarcely realize what this form of 
temptation meant to the Master. But we can 
understand somewhat of its force. It is out- 
ward display more than intrinsic value which 
leads the world. Not that the world of 
humanity, ourselves included, do not ulti- 
mately come to recognize the worth of true 
values and follow, after a fashion, in that 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 181 

wake, but we are swayed to and fro and run 
farthest and fastest after those things which 
are outward and full of display, rather than 
after those things which make for true worth. 
Do you say this is a libel on human nature ? 
You had better not say that in the city of 
Auburn. A city where the finest kind of a 
literary entertainment, be it lecture or some- 
thing else, must go begging for listeners, 
while every circus tent, be it a ten cent show 
or fifty cent one, is crowded to its utmost 
capacity. The temptation of Jesus was to 
cast Himself down from an eminence that 
He might, in the presence of a multitude be- 
cause of His superhuman power, descend 
without harm to Himself to the wonder and 
astonishment of the spectators which would 
have been a great wonder. This, some of 
you can appreciate, who have gone so far and 
endured so much and have waited so long to 
see a man descend in a parachute from some 
great height. But not once does He use His 
omnipotent power for selfish purposes or 
vain glory. 

Not only does He not use His power for 
vain glory in this lowest of departments 
where but little of real value to the world is 



182 THE SEEN FAITH. 

to be seen, but in every department of life 
He refuses to interfere with the natural 
course of civilization, or to wrest from the 
brow of some future generation the laurel 
wreath of fame, although He might seem to 
have been justified in so doing and thereby 
gain to himself among all classes great re- 
nown. You never find Jesus doing anything 
directly, outside of the accomplishing the one 
purpose for which- He came. But there is no 
advance in science or philosophy but what 
was known to Him. He could have told us 
of oiher worlds, of the regular movements of 
the systems, of the place of comets, the 
origin and miystery of the sun's heat, of just 
how the light came to this earth. He could 
have unlocked the secrets of the earth and 
settled the final problems of geology. It was 
within His power to declare the true relation 
of spirit to matter and to have left a system 
of psychology which would have rendered 
the work of DeCartes, Leibnitz or Kant silly 
and useless. It was possible for Him 'o have 
caused Palestine and Egypt to have been 
connected with steam car and steamship, to 
have traversed the city of cities with electric 
cars, and to have lighted its streets with 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 183 

electric lights. He could have set the steam 
press thundering in its mighty haste to crys- 
talize the news of the day in all the cities of 
the east — but enough, suffice it to say, while 
the imagination might run riot here, Jesus 
could have anticipated every discovery or in- 
vention of all times and could justly have 
claimed the honor for them all, but here He 
is most silent. It sometimes seems that it 
would have been a profit to the world should 
He have done this, but He who knows the 
times and the seasons best sends thro' some 
human instrumentality those discoveries and 
inventions which are timely in the age in 
which they come, and to man He gives the 
glory of the discovery or invention. To 
pause a moment in our thought, is it not 
strange that so many honor more those who 
discover what God has wrought, than the God 
that wrought them ? 

But what lesson does He teach us through 
His silence here ? Is this silence golden for 
us ? Yes, if we will listen to it, golden beyond 
the weight of worlds. What is the lesson ? 
Certainly not, that we should not exercise our 
powers to their fullest capacity in the depart- 
ments of invention, discovery and speculation 



184 THE SEEN FAITH, 

but certainly yes, that we should never do 
what we do simply for display or for vain- 
glory or selfish aggrandizement. It would 
have been of no particular value to the age in 
which He lived to have given it the knowledge 
which we now possess ; it might have been 
exceedingly harmful. It would simply have 
added to His fame for the time, and would 
have satisfied the curiosity of the public. 
Not much beyond this. And this is our les- 
son from His second temptation. 

As you come to study human nature, as you 
see it manifested in yourself, as you come to 
study and analyze your own motives for your 
every deed, are you not discouraged with 
yourself ? Are you not disgusted ? Have you 
not seen that the great mass of our deeds are 
done for display, for vainglory ? 

Examine yourself in the one item of dress. 
What is the first idea in your mind when you 
purchase your dress or coat ? To get that 
which is in good taste and comfortable and 
within your means, or to get something which 
will surpass your fellows, which will attract 
attention and give you for the time a certain 
distinction ? 

In your laudable desire to get up and on in 



III 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED, 185 

this life what is the motive which guides you? 
Simply self aggrandizement and vainglory, 
or are you after true values by which you can 
make yourself better and useful to the world 
in which you live. I heard of two young men 
the other day who lived in a small community 
and had finally decided to start out in life for 
themselves. This certainly was a laudable 
ambition, but the motive which was on the 
mind of the young men was brought out 
when one of them said, " I tell you what, when 
we once get a start in life we will get some 
plug hats and come back here and make these 
people stare." How much of that motive ^' to 
make the people stare," has entered into 
your ambition ? I know a man over sixty years 
of age who, when a boy, was poor and conse- 
quently became the butt of ridicule to certain 
brainless fops who drove fast horses and whose 
industrious fathers had left them rich. This 
poor young man formed a resolution in his 
early days, to go away from home and 
work hard until he became rich and then he 
would come home riding in a barouche finer 
than that town had ever seen. He went away 
and many years after he became rich. I saw 
him start out to fulfill the purpose of his life 

13 



186 THE SEEN FAITH. 

and he drove a barouche finer than that town 
had ever seen, but he was a disappointed old 
man. How many of us have left our homes 
under some similar impulse. A noted college 
professor of thirty years experience once said 
to me, that he believed that seventy- five per 
cent, of all college students came to college 
for the sole idea of going through for the 
name of it rather than for the true value of 
the mental development. I do not endorse 
that statement by quoting it, but he was wiser 
than I and had a right to speak. Oh, human- 
ity, great are thy ruins ! 

This is an age of looking-glasses and deco- 
rations ; of hypocrisy and deceit. 

During the exhibition of a traveling men- 
agerie and circus in a Virginian town, the 
painted clown is said to have delivered the 
following oration : 

"- We have taken in six hundred dollars 
here today — more money I venture to say 
than any minister of the gospel in this com- 
munity would receive for a whole year's 
services. A large portion of this money was 
given by church members, and a large por- 
tion of this audience is made up of members 
of the church. When your preacher asks you 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 187 

to aid in supporting the gospel, you are too 
poor to give anything. Yet you come here 
and pay dollars to hear me talk nonsense. I 
am a fool because I am paid for it ; I make 
my living by it. You profess to be wise, and 
yet you support me in my folly. But per- 
haps you say you did not come to see the 
circus, but the animals. If you came to see 
the animals, why did you not simply look at 
them and leave ? Now is not this a pretty 
place for Christians to be in ? Do you not 
feel ashamed of yourselves ? You ought to 
blush in such a place as this." 

It is facetiously added that the sensation 
following a speech like this, in such a place, 
from such a speaker, may be imagined. The 
local clergy availed themselves of the spirit 
thus produced ; a religious revival was 
attempted and a collection for foreign missions 
resulted in the sum of $4.50. 

Humanity follows the show, the farce, the 
acting, and leaves the real, the valuable, the 
true to take care of itself. May God save us ! 

What does our self-examination teach us ? 
That we are more prone to spend our energy 
for display and vainglory and to follow hard 
after those things which make for a show in 



188 THE SEEN FAITH. 

life, than we are to strive to make the most 
of our Uves along the line of true values for 
the accomplishing of our purpose in living. 
This makes our living a hollow mockery and 
turns us all into a hypocritical society. 
What does the example of Jesus teach us ? 
That if we accomplish our purpose in living 
we shall have to sacrifice, if indeed it can be 
called a sacrifice, our love for display and 
show which after all brings nothing but dis- 
satisfaction in the end, and to make our lives 
conform to the example set us while Jesus 
lived among men. 

The most brilliant spectacle a man or 
woman can make is to make their lives real and 
earnest for Jesus' sake ; to let the things seen 
be a sure indicator of things unseen ; to 
spend their energies for the things which are 
of full value. There is no satisfaction to be 
gained in this centering of all things on ones 
self; this pomp and display and show to 
attract attention to yourself ; this peacock 
strutting among your fellows, saying as loud 
as anything can say it, see how handsome 
I am and how easily I surpass you all. 
God has written it in His law of nature 
that one will be the most happy and the best 



i 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 189 

loved who forgets himself and lives that 
others may live happy ; who uses the powers 
God has given him in developing himself 
along the way of the real and true for the 
good of humanity. If we live this way there 
will be less unhappy homes, there will be 
more happy lives, there will be less charge of 
hypocrisy against the church. 

It is said that in Japan they decorate the 
back side of their furniture as well as the 
front, while in English lands only the front 
side receives attention. Oh, my friend, let 
us decorate the inside of our lives. Let us 
make the soul shine and you may rest assured 
that some way it will shine through this cov- 
ering and decorate the outside of us with the 
brilliancy of Heaven. 

We are going on dress parade one of these 
days. We shall come up before all nations. 
We shall stand in the light of the eternal 
throne of God. The gaze of every eye will 
be upon us ; the eye of the past, present and 
future of every generation which has lived or 
will live upon this earth ; the eye of all 
Heaven. The husk of eternal things will 
have been thrown aside and the naked soul 
will be open to view. Then you will be seen 



190 THE SEEN FAITH. 

as you are and with not a shadow of a leaf to 
hide your shame. 

Live with this fact before you. Lay aside 
your hypocritical mask and let the real, the 
true, the good be triumphant. Then you 
will have nothing to fear at that last great 
day. Do not jump from the pinnacle of any 
temple to be seen of men, but walk firmly on 
the ground and use your God-given powers 
for the great purpose of your life and for 
nothing farther. God grant that some sweet 
day even in this life, the friendly grasp of 
the hand will not only seem friendship, but 
mean friendship, and that the flag we fly at 
our mast will indicate the true sentiment 
under which we sail. 

All hail, O Nature, true ! 

For thou hast written through 
Fountain and stream ; 

On bursting bud and flower, 

In wood and shady bower, 

And on each golden hour. 
To be and not to seem. 

But in the world of thought, 
Where that which seems is sought, 

And baubles gleam ; 
Is stamped on every deed. 
Where the impetus is greed, 
And glittering fancies lead, 

Not to be but seem. 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED. 191 

Then let our chorus ring, 
As we take up the theme 

Of Him Supreme ; 
And live it in our lives, 
While each to the prize arrives, 
As he continually strives 

To be and not to seem. 

Brethren, over and over again the world 
has heard you say that you wanted to be 
like Jesus, and that you were endeavoring 
to be like Him day by day. Did you mean 
what you said ? If so, in what way are you 
trying to imitate Him ? To make the way 
very specific so that you may not be mistaken 
is the object of this series of sermons ; it is 
one thing to say you want to be like Jesus, 
and to follow Him in some indefinite way 
without knowledge of just how He lived to 
bring out before the world the true principle 
of true living, and it is quite another thing 
to so grow in the knowledge of His living as 
that you can and do follow closely the princi- 
ples upon which He acted ; as you get the 
knowledge, you are under the highest obliga- 
tion to imitate it, to put it into practice at 
once and for all time, and you will be held 
accountable for what you have known, and 
what you might know of the way of life. 



19^ THE SEEN FAITH. 

This life is more serious than you think. It 
will not be over in three score years and ten. 
It will never end. The arc of the circle along 
which you move here, will indicate most truly 
the orbit of your soul yonder and forever. 
As you can determine from an arc of a circle 
its circumference and diameter, so you can 
take the arc of your life here and demonstrate 
most clearly the circumference and diameter 
of the space you will occupy when time shall 
be no more. And the serious and awful part 
of it is that you are now constructing that arc. 
Take the arc of the life Jesus lived and learn 
to move along that line and your circle will 
circumscribe Heaven and its diameter will be 
through the gate of pearl, across the river of 
life and the sea of glass, and before the great 
white throne. 

Let me recapitulate what we have learned 
thus far of the arc of His life here. He was 
perfect man, through God incarnate, and thus 
it is possible for us to imitate His life. He 
came into this life God-sent and for a definite 
purpose, and so have you come into this life 
God-sent, and for a definite purpose. His 
purpose was to do His Father's business, and 
so is yours. That He might do this, He 



SACRIFICE DEMANDED, 193 

sacrificed ease and comfort, and refused to 
use the powers which were Kis for selfish 
aggrandizement and vainglory, and so must 
you. Will you do it ? 

Imitating Jesus ? I wonder how much of 
His likeness He sees in us ? I wonder how 
much the world knows of Him by seeing Him 
through our daily life ? God grant that they 
may see more of Him through us than they 
have thus far. He came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give His life a 
ransom for many. Here is the key-note for 
action. 



MANLINESS IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 

Text : Matthew VI : 33. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, 
and his righteousness." 

Whosoever there may be who thinks that it 
is not a manly thing to be a Christian and to 
imitate Jesus in their Uving, does not know 
what Christianity means and is not acquainted 
with the Christ of history. What do you 
mean by manliness, anyway ? We use so 
many terms in our every day conversation 
whose real meanmg we do not understand 
that this may be one of them. To the mind 
of a growing multitude, manliness and Chris- 
tianity, as interpreted by the life of Jesus, are 
synonymous. Do you think it is a manly 
thing to take the name of God in vain ? Do 
you think it is manly to lie and steal and to 
let the lowest passions run riot ? Do you 
think it is a manly thing to oppress the sick 
and the afflicted, to beat down the weak and 
laud the strong? Do you think it a manly 
thing to get drunk and abuse your family 
and your friends ? Do you think it manly 
to bet and gamble and overreach in your 



MANLINESS IN CIIRI STLIKENESS. 195 

accounts ? Do you think it a manly thing to 
run down the Christian religion and swear at 
the Bible and blaspheme your mother's God ? 
If you do, I can understand why you think it 
an unmanly thing to be a Christian and why 
you reject the claims of the life of Jesus, the 
Christ. If you do not, I cannot understand 
your opposition. Can you explain it ? 

One trouble is, that we have the means 
which are being used for arriving at the stature 
of Jesus, all tangled up with that stature. 
There is a vast difference between the means 
used for coming at some end, and the end to 
which you would come. It may be all right 
for you to reach Syracuse, but it would be all 
wrong for you to go on the Southern Central 
southward to reach that city. And just 
because some one has made a mistake and 
gone southward to reach Syracuse, are you 
going to say that it is all wrong for you to go to 
Syracuse ? Nonsense ! And yet because many 
have thought that the way some have gone 
to reach the measure of the stature of the 
God-man was wrong, they have loudly pro- 
claimed that the stature was not manly, and 
that it was out of harmony with Nature's 
law. Nonsense ! It is not to my way of 



196 THE SEEN FAITH. 

leaching the stature of Jesus, I would call 
your attention, but to the stature. It is not 
to my neighbor s interpretation of what Chris- 
tianity is, that I would call your attention, 
but to Christianity. Who cares how you 
attain the character of Jesus if you only 
reach it. There is so much of the massing of 
our forces against method these days, and all 
other days if you please, that we loose sight 
of the end to be reached by the method, or 
some method. What do we care about the 
looks of the skin of a cocoanut, if it only 
environs a sound nut, and we want the meat. 
There is a slang phrase used much these days 
in vulgar conversation that has been born of 
the American spirit and is full of meaning, 
and that is, ^' get there." It is the getting 
there, that we Americans care about. It is 
the getting there we desire to emphasize in 
all our efforts to make you a Christian. Sail in 
that bark you like best, under any banner 
you may choose, only see to it that you arrive 
at the sure destination, the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ. Oh, how 
much time is wasted, and how many foolish' 
volumes are written, and how much foolish 
opposition is aroused, all over the means and 



MANLINESS IN CHRISTLIKEN ESS. 197 

not at all over the end ! It is not my Presby- 
terianism I present to you and ask you to 
imitate. It is not my brother's Methodism or 
Baptistism and so forth, that he presents to 
you for your imitation, but Jesus the Christ, 
the embodiment of Christianity and the per- 
fection of manliness. 

I challenge you this morning to define true 
manliness in its highest sense without con- 
sciously or unconsciously describing Jesus, 
the carpenter's son. I point you to the lofty 
summit of a mountain and I tell you that if 
you will climb that mountain and wait until 
morning comes, you will see one of the most 
glorious sunrises you have ever witnessed. 
It is not the pathway along which I have gone 
that is essential, that you may reach the sum- 
mit and behold the sunrise, but that you reach 
the summit and see the sunrise. 

Notice that the means to the end must re- 
ceive some attention. You immediately ask 
me the way to reach the summit and I tell 
you that I reached the summit so and so, but 
if you can find some other way, it may even 
be better than mine, I care not ; only reach the 
summit. And now, when you say that it is 
not a manly thing to imitate Jesus and be- 



198 THE SEEN FAITH. 

come a Christian, in the sense of becoming 
Christlike, I want to say that it is not Jesus' 
life you are referring to at all, but to some 
misconception of Him gained by confusing 
the way some take of reaching Him, and the 
way some act after they say they have arrived 
at His stature, with the life itself Study 
Him and imitate Him and you will be manly 
in its highest and Heaven-born sense. 

This seemingly natural antipathy which some 
young men have against Christianity, may be 
due to the grievous mistakes and misconcep- 
tions which certain grand, and yet somewhat 
misguided Christians, have had of the right 
way to imitate Jesus ? There has been a 
very strong sentiment kept alive in some 
mysterious way, that has loudly proclaimed 
that it was un-Christian and un-Christ-like to 
play ball and croquette and lawn tennis, to 
run races or see horses driven at their speed, 
to romp, or shout, or laugh, or even to whistle 
especially on Sunday. I remember arising 
one beautiful Sunday morning when a little 
lad, and feeling remarkably happy and quite 
in sympathy with the day. I came down 
stairs whistling out the joy of my heart, 
praising God in my way as the birds did in 



MANLINESS IN CHRI STLIK EN ESS. 199 

theirs, when an over-zealous person, who was 
then living in our famil}^ and as good a 
Christian as ever lived too, set my ears to 
ringing, not with Heavenly melody, and at 
one stroke of her palm away went whistle, 
joy, reverence and all, and I was transformed 
into a little heathen, at one blow. Thank 
God for a mother who told me privately, that 
while this person was a very good woman, she 
might be mistaken after all, and that it might 
not be so distasteful to God, if I did imitate 
the birds a little, if I was not too loud about 
it. 

Have the boys not been taught that it was 
not Christ like to be boys, and that because 
there was no record of Jesus' boyhood days, 
we must jump from babyhood and swaddling 
clothes to full fledged manhood ? No wonder 
that the boys have taken to the woods, while 
the devil has captured all the boys' fun and 
made it vile by mixing it with sin, and that 
he is now using it for bait to capture them 
and dam their souls Boys are boys. That 
may seem to be plain, but it needs emphasis 

Then the boys, having been robbed of 
their fun, have been taught, that the only 
way to be Christ- like was to go to prayer 



200 THE SEEIV FAITH. 

meeting, read their bibles, attend church ser- 
vices and Sunday school, and be old men. 
They were so taught, that they confounded 
Christlikeness with the means used for attain- 
ing that likeness. Instead of being taught that 
Christlikeness consisted in character, in being 
good, they have been taught that it consisted 
in church services, and in not being happy. 
Oh let us teach the boys the truth ; that they 
are to go to church to learn how to be Christ- 
like, attend prayer meeting for the same pur- 
pose ; they are to read their bibles to find out 
just how in character to be like their Master. 
That a Bible and a base ball bat, or lawn 
tennis racket, or a bag of marbles, go well 
together. I dare say, that they will learn in 
time to love the prayer meeting, and the" 
church, and their bibles, and will learn, what 
many have not, to make a discrimination be- 
tween games and sin, and thus to see that 
they do not get mixed. It is not the pack 
of cards which is sinful, but gambling. It is 
not base ball which is sinful, but fighting and 
betting. Let the church wrest from the 
hand of the devil what he has wrested from 
the domain of the pleasureable and moral 
and save the boys. This week past there 




MANLINESS IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 201 

have been from five hundred to one thousand 
boys and young men assembled at Mr. 
Moody's home at Northfield. They have 
been studying the Bible and methods of 
Christian work every forenoon under the best 
teachers this country affords. Every after- 
noon the study has been laid aside and base 
ball, lawn tennis and games of many descrip- 
tion have been the rule, and Mr. Moody has 
been the largest boy of them all. Thank 
God the boy's day has at last come and our 
motto is : The Young Men for Christ. 

The length and character of this introduc- 
tion will be excused, when we realize the 
bearing it has on our theme : that it is not 
only manly to be Christlike, but that His like- 
ness is the only manly likeness worthy of the 
name of model. If you can keep that before 
the world and make them see it, you have 
won the day. Let us get a correct under- 
standing of what Christlikeness means, and 
then we shall realize, I think, that the manly 
thing to do, is to be like Him. 

Thus far in our course, we have found, 
that Jesus set before Him one purpose, and 
that that was an all consuming one. Is there 
any lack of manliness about that ? We have 



202 THE SEEN FAITH, 

seen that He sacrificed His own ease and 
comfort, that He might attain that purpose. 
Is there anything unmanly about that ? On 
the other hand, does it not embody the very 
essence of success in any undertaking ? Is 
it not just the manly way of doing business ? 
Again, we have learned that He would not 
use His powers for show or vainglory. There 
is nothing unmanly here. Indeed you will 
have to travel this way if you get on and up 
in life. There is something about His char- 
acter and life as we have seen it thus far, that 
is so heroic that it makes the blood tingle and 
makes one feel that it was not all weakness 
and sentiment which characterized that life. 
May we learn to love Him more and more as 
the weeks go on. 

Today I call your attention to the third 
temptation of His life, and one which brings 
out most clearly, that Fle sacrificed earthly 
and temporal power to attain the purpose of 
ransoming a world. 

The grandeur and magnificence of His 
sacrifice here can scarcely be comprehended. 
As a last resort the adversary brings before 
Jesus in vision, the kingdoms of the earth and 
promises to transfer them to Him, if He will 



MANLINESS IN CIIRISTLIKENESS. 203 

only fall down and worship him. We must 
continually bear in mind that Jesus was man, 
as well as God, and that He was susceptible 
to just this temptation. Then we must bear 
in mind that He was equally God and had all 
power in His hands, as He afterward declared, 
and could have centralized the kingdoms of 
the world into one central kingdom of which 
He should be the head. We must also bear 
in mind that such a course might have been 
justifiable if it had not conflicted with the one 
aim in view, the ransoming of a lost world. 
There would have been no sin in an univer- 
sal empire, but to have done this would ha^e 
been to have thrown away the very mission 
upon which He comes into the world. How 
can we get this stupendous fact into our lim- 
ited minds ? We have clothed Jesus with 
supernatural power so long, that we can 
scarcely comprehend that there were any 
human elements entering into His character. 
Suppose that there was some young man 
in the city of Auburn with whom we are well 
acquainted. He has before him an idea that 
by his own efforts he can reclaim all the 
drunkards in the city, and he dedicates his 
life to that work. As he goes on about his 



204 THE SEEN FAITH. 

work there is offered to him the governorship 
of the state of New York. He looks the 
ground over carefully and sees that he can 
not be governor and accomplish his mission 
of saving lost humanity. He deliberately 
lays aside the proffered honor, although he 
well knows that along the pathway of his 
mission he will scarcely gain any recognition 
of his services, but an abundance of abuse 
and shame. What would you say of the sacri- 
fice? You might say he was foolish, and I 
think the world would agree with you. And 
yet suppose that no one could do this work 
but he, what then ? With this example before 
you, carry it up until you get in your mind 
this larger example. Here is a Man about 
thirty years of age, whose life thus far has 
been a very unpretentious one. Whose out- 
look on the world, as far as His taking any 
prominent part in it, was very limited as far 
as His neighbors could judge. Now there 
has come to Him the full consciousness that 
there has been put into His hands the full- 
ness of power, that He can make His life 
what He will, and that He can exercise as 
much power as He may choose in the affairs 
of the world. No wonder in that forty days 



MANLINESS IN CIIRISTLIKENESS. 205 

of solitude there comes to Him the many 
things He might do, and might become. No 
wonder the temptation comes to Him to 
exercise His powers by the way of temporal 
dominion. His own love for His race would 
lead Him to desire to release His people from 
their bondage to Rome. The natural and 
legitimate emotions and ambitions of the 
human race for dominion would lead Him to 
desire to set up a temporal or earthly king- 
dom whose limits should be the confines only 
of the discovered and undiscovered world. 
Along this pathway there is worldly honor 
and glory beyond the greatest of the world's 
best, On the other hand if He sets about to 
deliver the world from sin ; to ransom them 
from the dominion of Satan : to open before 
them the gates of an Heavenly Paradise, His 
own friends will call Him a fool and His 
enemies will be multiplied beyond count. 
The very ones He seeks to save will spit 
upon Him, crown Him with thorns, and within 
four years crucify Him between two thieves. 
Which pathway will He take ^ 

If you had known of that conflict going on 
in that desert place, what w^ould you have 
said would have been the outcome ? Think 



206 THE SEEN PAITH. 

of how Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Welling- 
ton, Washington and Grant have been hon- 
ored and how their names stir up deep 
emotions as we read of their marvelous 
exploits. And then think that their deeds 
and their power and consequently their honor 
is not a beginning in comparison to the exploits 
and honor which this One would have achieved 
and won if he had chosen to lay aside His 
one purpose, and chosen in its stead a uni- 
versal dominion. Then which, do you think, 
would have gained the victory in the wilder- 
ness ? I want you to think of it, young man, 
you who have thought there was something 
weak in the Master's life work. And I want 
you to think of it, oh man, you who have 
decried the religion which He has established 
as one for old women and young children. 
The battle in that wilderness was the greatest 
battle this world has ever seen, and there 
were larger issues resting on it, than on any 
other conflict with which we of this world are 
familiar. No wonder it lasted forty days. 

But it is at last ended. Deliberately this 
Man lays aside all thoughts of temporal reign 
or universal earthly dominion and accepts the 
crown of thorns and the cross that He may 



MANLINESS IN CHRI STLIKENESS. 207 

redeem a world. He will worship no devil, 
He will yield to no wrong, but He will save a 
soul from sin. If that one act w^as not the 
very essence of manly heroism, where will you 
find it? The magnificence of that sacrifice 
has never been approached. No wonder that 
angels come and minister unto Him and that 
He comes back into Galilee in the power of 
the Spirit ready for His work. Wherefore He 
has a name which is above every name and 
He is set down at the right hand of the Father 
on high, and therefore He has established a 
kingdom which shall have no end and which 
shall take in all Heaven at last. 

But where is the lesson for us ? No temp- 
tation of universal dominion is set before us ? 
No ! It is not to the size of the battle, but 
to the character of it, our attention is directed. 
In miniature we have these same battles to 
fight ; every life has its own wilderness, and 
every one will come forth either a conqueror, 
or conquered. Thereafter you will walk in 
the power of the Spirit or you will walk in 
the communion of darkness. Which shall it 
be ? God grant that we shall come forth 
victorious, having angels our ministering 
spirits and God our friend. 



208 THE SEEN FAITH, 

There are specific lessons for us here, and 
lessons which breath all the earnestness of 
Heaven. 

In the first place, no magnitude of profit 
can release us from the pathway of duty. 
No matter how small the duty, or how large 
the profit. If size of gain could have justi- 
fied any one for leaving the line of duty it 
would have justified Jesus in so doing. 
There are no little duties in this life work. 
Profit can never be weighed against duty. 
First settle in your mind whether a thing is 
your duty or not and if it be, the gates of 
hell must not prevail against it. Everything 
which would prevail against it is from the 
gates of hell. If this one lesson would only 
be heeded what a different world this would be. 
If this one lesson would be heeded by all, or 
by a few, all of the time, in Calvary church, 
what a different church we would have. It 
would not be long before what seems to be a 
duty would have blossomed into love and the 
pathway of duty would cease to be irksome. 
How the Lord's work would prosper then. 
But here as elsewhere, we find those who 
have taken their vows at God's altar to be 
faithful to the" interests of the work of the 



MANLINESS IN CHRISTLIKENESS. 209 

Lord in this particular place, casting their 
vows and their word to the winds, deserting 
the pathway of duty, and for what? Oh, 
my fellow man, what do you think the Lord 
thinks of such ? What think you are the 
emotions of that Jesus who gave up all 
things for you as he sees you, for worldly 
gain of some character, or because of some 
prejudice, or some whim, or for some spite, 
turning right away from your work which He 
has committed to your keeping and letting it 
rot ! Remember that for all such there is a 
judgment day and a time of reckoning ; that 
there will be a day when this same Jesus, 
who gave up such magnificent worldly gain 
for us, will demand of us as our Judge some 
showing of appreciation on our part. May 
God help us all. 

And for you, oh man, who can not afford 
to serve this Jesus because, should you do 
it, you would have to sacrifice some illegiti- 
mate business, which you are carrying on for 
worldly gain, what do you think awaits you ? 

Jesus has sacrificed Heaven once and earth 
too for you, do you think that you are doing 
the manly thing now toward Him ? And are 
you one of those who sneer at the manliness 
of the Christ as something boyish and weak ? 



210 THE SEEN FAITH, 

May Heaven pity you and save you in spite 
of your unmanly, dishonorable ways, but if it 
do, it must save you from those ways. 

Secondly, temporal values must give way 
before eternal values. Always weigh the cir- 
cumstances of this life in the balance of 
Heaven. Have nothing to do with that false 
teaching which says, '' I will make the most I 
can out of this life and let the future life take 
care of itself." Keep before you not only 
your mission in life, but the eternal city. 
Remember that you are not to interpret things 
by what they seem, but by what they actually 
are, and that there is nothing which shows 
what is the real and true, but the word of 
God. If we had Jesus' vision, we would 
understand as he understood it, that this 
world in its entirety is as nothing compared 
with the world which awaits us. '' Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and His righteous- 
ness," for, **what shall it profit a man if he 
gain the whole world and lose his own soul." 

Thirdly, success along the line of any one 
purpose can only be reached by a sacrifice of 
everything inconsistent with that purpose. 
We will learn that lesson before we finish this 
life, if we have not learned it already, and it 
will be the success or failure of our lives 



MANLINESS IN CHRI STLIKENESS. 211 

which will teach us. Jesus' purpose could 
not allow His being a temporal ruler, and con- 
sequently He rejected the universal empire. 

Fourthly, the work of soul-saving is the 
highest of all work and it is worthy of every 
sacrifice Those who enter this work because 
they can do nothing else, had better stay out. 

Fifthly and finally, these three lines of sac- 
rifice, comfort, and ease, display of power 
for personal aggrandizement and universal 
dominion, teach us the grandeur of sacrifice. 
I do not know how it impresses you, but there 
is something sublime and tremendous even to 
the awful in this sacrifice of Jesus. I never 
contemplate it, but I feel like lying on my 
face and crying with Isaiah, *^ Woe is me." 
If Jesus were only human, this would lift Him 
to a seat above all others. Indeed, it proves 
that He was not human, for no human being 
of his own strength could have followed in 
this path. There He stands, a lonely figure 
outlined against the background of history. 
He has no fellows. All are pigmies beside 
Him. After the forty days of temptation, 
the crown of thorns and the cross, sacrifice 
becomes grand even to the sublime, if it be 
done for others. I do not wonder that for 
decades of years after He lived among men. 



212 THE SEEN FAITH. 

men begged to be crucified for His sake and 
that the martyrs were revered almost to wor- 
ship. Again I say, young man, think of this. 
Jesus v^as only thirty, when this battle of the 
wilderness took place. A young man in the 
most terrific of fights and He came off vic- 
torious. Hereafter, call no sacrifice you may 
make, large ; but do not call it small, for He 
has made all sacrifice dignified and lofty. 
The cross, once a sign of greatest shame, has 
become a sign of loftiest character, for He 
was crucified upon it. 

Do you say that it is beyond human effort 
to be like Jesus? Yes; beyond all human 
effort, but you have been promised divine aid. 
It is for you to be like Him if you will to be, 
for such is the promise. Not like Him all at 
once ; you will be changed from glory unto 
glory, as you behold as in a glass the glory 
of His image. Only look at Him. Study 
Him. Some sweet and restful day, when the 
care of this life is all past, you will awake in 
His likeness and you will nOo be disappointed. 
It will pay you for all your sacrifice, no matter 
what that sacrifice has been. Grow like Him 
day by day. Grow like Him as the trees 
grow, not so much by trying as by assimilating 
the nourishment God provides. 



THE LOWLY SERVICE. 

Text: John XIII : 15. "For I have given you an example 
that ye should do as I have done to you." 

The Bible is unlike any other book that has 
ever been written. You are constantly finding 
in it what you would least expect to find. It 
seems written contrary to the usual judgment 
of the world. And right here you may dis- 
cover an evidence of its Divine origin. It 
states principles of living and doing which is 
against the philosophy of man. It overrides 
his judgment. It stamps as false many pet 
theories. It smites the mountain peaks of 
man's reasoning and fills up the valleys with 
the fragments. 

The reason of the woild leads mankind to 
trust in horses and chariots and mighty men 
above any trust in God. Against such, this 
Book has pronounced its woe. Man's judg- 
ment invites the armies to fight his battles for 
him ; this Book says '' It is not by armies nor 
power of men, but by my spirit." The world 
says if you would be great make the world 
your slave. The Bible tells us to be the ser- 



2 1 4 THE SEEN FA TTH. 

vant of all and that that is the road to great- 
ness. Thus ever is it crowding out the theo- 
ries of men and elevating otherwise unnoticed 
principles as the word of God ; picking up a 
jewel here and a jewel there, trodden under 
foot for ages by men, yet held aloft in the 
fingers of God as a diamond of the first 
magnitude. 

Our text is taken from a context that stands 
almost without a parallel among the seeming- 
contradictory scenes and statements of inspir- 
ation. The last hours of Christ's human life 
are fast approaching. Soon as the offering for 
sin He is to die the death of the cross He 
sits with His disciples in an upper chamber 
at Jerusalem. He has just instituted the 
supper which you are so soon to commemorate. 
It is ended now He has taught His compan- 
ions many lessons in the years they have been 
with Him. Now, He is to teach them a final 
one as the keystone to the others. LivSten to 
the Biblical statement. ^'And Jesus knowing 
that the Father had given all things into His 
hands, and that He was come from God and 
went to God, riseth from the supper." 

How would this record be finished if this 
were a picture from the imagination of man ? 



THE LOWLY SER VLCE. 2 1 5 

We should look for some fine description 
of some mighty deed. Some final demonstra- 
tion of His divinity, such as would meet the 
demands of the most skeptical. The intro- 
duction of legions of angels to sing His 
praises and do His bidding. The opening 
of Heaven's gates and a revelation of the 
Father giving Him honor. Such would have 
been the climax of some Greek mythology. 
But not so with this record. It continues : 
^^ He laid aside His outer garments and took 
a towel and girded himself. After that He 
poureth water into a basin and began to wash 
the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the 
towel wherewith He was girded " Wondrous 
statement ! Jesus, the God incarnate, having 
all power in His hands ! knowing that He 
came forth from. God and was soon to return 
to God ! Jesus^ who before the incarnation, 
had by the word of His mouth wrought out 
creation ! Jesus, before whom angel and 
seraphim bowed and did His bidding! The 
infinite God and the perfect Man stooping lo 
remove the dust of travel from the feet of 
His disciples. No wonder the impetuous 
Peter, moved by the seeming mconsistent act 
refuses at first to be washed. This viewed 



216 THE SEEN FAITH. 

through human eyes unenlightened by the 
Spirit, is the greatest anti-cHmax in the world's 
history. 

It was to this that Jesus refers as He speaks 
in the words of the text : ^' For I have given 
you an example that ye should do as I have 
done to you." 

I would call your attention then to the two- 
fold character of the example of Christ. 

First. Its nature. 

The world was lost in darkness. No guide 
had ever been revealed to lead the lost out 
into the light of truth and righteousness No 
example had been discovered by which, with 
His conscience satisfied, man could measure 
his life. There was the decalogue, but there 
was no sympathy or love in the thunderings 
of Sinai. That ethical standard was too 
lofty for him to reach unaided. 

No one among men had ever measured to 
it yet. It was some snow-capped height 
where no human foot had ever pressed. To 
be sure it bore the foot-prints of the Creator, 
but what was God to man ? He is infinite. 
Man is finite. He is holy. Man is sinful. 
God and his angels might live such a con- 
ception. Man could only admire, attempt. 



I 



THE LOWLY SER VLCE, 217 

fail. The only resource left was to give up 
the attempt and follow the best guide visible. 

Thus when there was righteous action 
attempted, righteous action followed. Where 
there was defect, defect was reproduced. 
The Hebrew sang the songs of a David, dis- 
cussed and admired the proverbs of Solomon, 
praised the faith of Noah, imitated their lives. 
The East understood the wisdom of Confucius 
as divine and followed his example. The 
west discovered a Socrates, learned his philo- 
sophy, but failed to discriminate between a 
partially true philosophy and an imperfect 
life. 

Therefore in all the lives thus molded was 
seen the imperfection of the master. 

Humanity was sick and faint with effort, 
while there went a longing from many a soul 
for an example, perfect in character, safe for 
copying. 

Suddenly over the hills of Judea swelled 
the angel chorus of ** Peace on earth, good 
will to men." He who spake as man never 
spake before, He who lives as man never 
lived before, walks, talks and lives with men. 

At last the world had found its ideal. Yea, 
more, the ideal of God. He for whom the 

14 



218 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Psalmist's soul had longed as the *' hart for 
water-brooks," had come with the living 
waters to satisfy every soul. No more were 
the laws of Sinai too high and lofty for 
human endeavor. Christ's life was the law 
incarnate, the living word. 

But Christ became something more than a 
living example of righteousness, a lofty ethi- 
cal standard by which to measure the lives 
of men. Such a life would have been too 
cold and unfeeling, a little better than the 
law not lived. When he said to his disciples : 
^' I have given you an example that ye should 
do as I have done to you," he meant some- 
thing distinctively more than that they should 
imitate his moral excellence. Christ died to 
remove the guilt of sin, and more. He gave 
the Holy Spirit to remove the stain of sin, in 
regeneration, and more. He gave an exam- 
ple for man to follow in righteousness, that 
with a transformed life he might '* measure 
up to the stature of the perfect man." 

But is this all ? No ; this is but the one 
side of His example. Christ's life must be 
viewed from every side. It must be imitated 
in every side or its beauty, its force, its worth 
is lost. Christ's life would not have been the 



THE LOWLY SER VICE. 219 

sacrifice it was if it had gone no further. 
That Hfe which only attempts to measure up 
to this side of Christ is not following the 
Christ. It is a Christian life without a sacri- 
fice, the life of a stoic, with the sorrow bear- 
ing, burden carrying, sympathetic heart of 
Jesus Christ left out. 

Christ became the perfect example of self- 
abnegation, of self -forgetfulness in His devo- 
tion to the final redemption of man. On the 
one hand He was the law incarnate. On the 
other, the self-forgetful, loving, sympathizing 
servant of man. By the perfection of His 
moral character, He bids man look at his own 
life and by that light, which He is, reveals its 
darkness and imperfection. Then, by virtue 
of His death, by the power of His resurrec- 
tion, through the regeneration of the Spirit, 
He transforms the life, dispels the darkness 
and then bids him work out the life He has 
placed within him by copying His own. But 
the power of that example does not stop here. 
He bids him behold the fields white for the 
harvest and inasmuch as he has been served, 
to serve. On the one hand to live again the 
righteous life of Christ. On the other, dead 
now to self, to live for others. '" For I have 



220 THE SEEN FAITH. 

given you an example that you should not 
alone live righteously in life, but while you 
are in this world that you should serve one 
another." 

But secondly, let us look at the proper 
limits of our imitation of the example of 
Christ. 

The limit is two-fold. On the one hand, 
we behold the purity of His life. From the 
cradle to the cross, there is no sin. For eigh- 
teen centuries the eyes of the world have 
been upon that character and no deceit has 
been found in it. It is difficult to compre- 
hend this fact. The world wrested by sin 
from its position in harmony with worlds of 
light, can hardly comprehend the harmony 
of a sinless life. Yet that life has been lived 
among us. The perfect character has come. 
The law is lived. The word is life, and the 
life IS the light of the world. 

Henceforth, that perfect character, in its 
moral perfection must be the goal toward 
which the world must strive. The ultimate 
height of human moral life, assisted by the 
Divine, will never be reached until it touches 
that. That is the moral limit. It may seem 
too lofty. We may think we can never meas- 



THE LO WL V SER VICE. 221 

ure with the stature of the God incarnate. 
But not the infinite God, but the perfect Man 
is our example, and in the sunlight of the 
kingdom that is to come, we ma}^ awake with 
His likeness satisfied. 

But there is another limit. If the perfec- 
tion of the law has been met, if the moral 
character has been perfected by agencies 
divine, if the life is now meet morally to 
mingle with the angels who kept their first 
estate, this is not sufficient. '' I have given you 
an example that you should do as I have done 
to you," reaches down as well as up. We are 
climbing to the heights of Mt. Sinai, in moral 
life. We are to reach down in our life of 
service until we reach the lowest want of the 
lowly. A Christ who only lived to manifest 
the righteous law in human action, would not 
have been the Christ. A life lived only to 
perfect itself in perfection, only to beautify 
itself, to gather rays of moral light to sepa- 
rate into rainbows for personal glory, would 
have been far from the measure of the God- 
man. Such a life would never have con- 
quered a world of sin. Very beautiful would 
it have been, but it would have been the 
marble statue that does not speak, the paint- 



222 THE SEEN FAITH. 

ing without a soul. To be sure such a life 
was Christ's. But it was vastly more. It 
was a life of service. A life of self-sacrifice 
for the souls of the lost. A life indicated 
by tears, by sorrow, by weariness oft forgotten, 
by compassion for the sinful, by bloody sweat, 
by lowly service. 

It was He who heard afar off the cry '^ un 
clean," from the leper's lips, and though 
weary went that He might touch to healing 
and whisper '^cleansed." It was He who 
groaned in spirit and wept at a Lazarus' 
grave. And it was He, the infinite God, the 
perfect Man, who that He might teach one 
final example of self-sacrificing service stooped 
and washed the disciples' feet. 

Fitting climax for the life of the Son of 
Man. His moral righteous life so lofty as to 
reach perfection and to stand without a rival 
among men or angels. His life of self sacri- 
ficing service so menial as to find its down- 
ward limit only when He removes the dust of 
travel from the feet of His disciples. 

No wonder that the infidel has sometimes 
stopped his scoffing as he reads this history 
from the life of Christ. No wonder that 
eyes unused to weep have wept here. Here 



THE LO WL y SER VICE. 223 

the Christian finds a new impetus for service. 
Legions of angels would have done His bid- 
ding. They would have come from the four 
corners of the heavens to have saved Him a 
single exertion. But He refuses it all and 
stoops to serve. And here in this lowly 
scene, we find the limit of imitation in serv- 
ing. The limit of moral action must not 
stop short of the perfect Man. The limit of 
action in serving will be reached only when 
we have done all we can, no matter how 
menial, for the happiness, the comfort, the 
salvation of our fellow men. 

Brethren, you are soon to approach the 
communion table of our Lord. There will 
come back to you there the memories of the 
past. The death struggle of the Master on 
the cross. The sound of nail and hammer. 
The jeer of soldier and the wound of spear. 
The expiring cry of /' My God, My God, 
why hast Thou forsaken Me?" You will 
remember then, what He has done for you, 
that He might bring you life and immortality. 
It is fitting that you should stop now for self 
examination. You are to commemorate there 
what He has done for you. Examine your- 
selves now, concerning what you have done 



224 THE SEEN FAITH, 

for Him. You cannot go on with this exam- 
ination by any measure of your own. Apply 
then, to your lives, the straight edge of the 
two-fold example of Christ. Have you made 
advancement in your Christian life since you 
last communed together ? " For I have given 
you an example that you should do as I have 
done to you," is our heritage tonight from 
Christ, through the apostles. Are we striving 
to obey it? Christ has left the world as far 
as physical eye can see. He lives to the 
world only as He lives through you. You 
are standing to them as examples of Him. 
Are they looking at you and condemning 
Christ ? You must not stop short. You may 
not reach the limit here. Such height seems 
too wonderful. But remember that the 
Christ who lived that life will aid you. And 
that life as the light of the world must shine 
through us undimmed: Somewhere we shall 
reach the stature of the perfect Man Doubt- 
less not on this earthly battle ground, but by 
striving toward it we shall each day come 
nearer. And then some day the '* old man " 
will be left behind. We shall carry upward 
but the new. We shall pass beyond the do- 
main of satan. We shall go through the 



THE LOWLY SER VLCE. 225 

pearly gates over which is written : '* And 
there shall in no wise enter into it anything 
that defileth." Let us not trifle with the 
example of Christ nor stop short of his 
stature. 

Brethren, you have called Him Master and 
Lord, and you do well. But the servant is 
not above His Lord. Are you following Him 
in service ? We may be living righteously 
and doing justly in all other things, but if we 
have left this part undone, we are far from 
the Christ. If we would be powers in the 
world, we must follow Him at the feet of His 
disciples. Jesus' life was not complete by 
living, but by doing. There are aching hearts 
near us that we may comfort. There are 
sorrowing souls upon whom we may pour the 
oil of gladness. There are thousands to 
whom we may preach at the lowly well of 
Sychar. x\nd there are many near us, very 
near, seemingly lost to all that is pure and 
holy, whom we may reach, not by the patroniz- 
ing way of a Pharisee, but by some act of 
kindness, some deed of love. 



226 THE SEEN FAITH. 

** Down in the human heart 

Crushed by the tempter, 
Feelings lie buried 

That grace can restore. 
Touched by a loving heart, 

Wakened by kindness, 
Cords that were silent 

May vibrate once more." 

Remember that you can not stoop so low 
in service to save a soul, that Christ has not 
been there before you. 

Away then with selfish living ! Welcome 
self-abnegation ! Away with selfish indul- 
gence ! Welcome the weary, thorny path of 
Christ ! And then by the power of the two- 
fold example, lived over in your lives, through 
the light of His moral perfection, shining 
through every fibre of your being, down at 
the feet of the disciples wiping away the dust 
of travel, you may find the pathway which 
leads to the rio^ht hand of the throne of God. 



ai 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 

Text : Acts IV : 33. " And with great power gave the apostles 
witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus : and great 
grace was upon them all." 

Jesus and the Resurrection : This was the 
theme of the early church. They had no 
time for philosophy ; no time for science ; no 
time for dogmatic theology ; only just time to 
witness with great power to Jesus and the 
resurrection. No wonder they could not stop 
for ought else. Jesus and the resurrection 
meant much to the little handful of disciples ; 
it meant all to them. It meant much to the 
world of humanity to whom they preached ; 
it meant all things to them. So the theme of 
Peter at Pentecost, was Jesus and the resur- 
rection. Jesus his Master that was dead was 
risen again and now sits at the right hand of 
God. And while Peter witnessed to these 
things people who hear are convinced by the 
hundreds that he was telling the truth and 
they accept his Jesus as their I^ord and Sav- 
ior. It was the theme of the apostles when 
before magistrates and governors and kings, 



228 THE SEEN FAITH. 

until Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and 
the dwellers in Mesopotamia and Greece and 
Rome and the uttermost parts of the habitable 
globe took fire and Jesus and the resurrection 
was the theme of sermon and prayer and of 
song. An angry world tried to live it down 
and argue it out and finally to burn and torture 
it out, but to no avail. Though men were 
beheaded and burned and imprisoned, and 
though generation after generation died, the 
theme lived on and on ever increasing in its 
revolutionary and regeneratory power, until it 
conquered the hatred and prejudices with 
which it was environed and the Roman empire 
knelt before it and handed it its scepter. The 
centuries passed on, and time, the great 
destroyer of men and reputation and empires 
and races and worlds, for eighteen periods 
has tried its power in battle against it and, lo 
we have come to another Easter morning and 
our theme is still Jesus and the Resurrection. 
But not our theme alone. It is the theme of 
million upon million of hearts and tongues 
and homilies. ^' Jesus and the Resurrection," 
sings and shouts the world today. In Ramona 
we read of the old Franciscan priest throwing 
up the window at day break and chanting 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 229 

some hymn of thanksgiving to God who had 
kept him through the night, and after he had 
commenced the hymn, one by one others 
would open their windows and join in the 
hymn until all within sound of voice would be 
singing that same hymn of praise. What an 
inspiration that must have been to those who 
heard or who joined that chorus. But as ^' out 
of the darkness of night, the world rolls into 
light and it is day break everywhere," and one 
after another takes for his morning theme 
Jesus and the Resurrection this day, until 
American and European and African and 
Asiatic and South Sea Islander, from three 
hundred million throats girdle the world with 
a hymn to God because of the risen Lord, 
I wonder how it must seem to Peter who 
preached that Pentecostal sermon when the 
theme was unknown outside of Jerusalem. I 
wonder how it must sound in Heaven to Peter 
and James and John and Paul and the whole 
line of early martyrs. Ay, to the risen Christ 
Himself? 

Amid such an universal hymn, and sur- 
rounded by Heaven itself, we take up our 
theme. What lessons have we given us in 
the fact that the crucified Jesus rose from 
the grave ? 



280 THE SEEN FAITH. 

It may be well to notice before we proceed 
to the lessons of the resurrection, that as an 
historical fact the resurrection can not be 
well called into question. There has been a 
fierce battle waged over this point of history. 
More fierce than over any other point that 
has been called into question. The reason 
of this is that thinking men have recognized 
the tremendous reach of this fact in its power 
to demolish and overthrow all forms of skep- 
ticism and all other forms of religion. For 
that reason it has been hotly contested. But 
thanks to German scholarship, the Christian 
world can rest easy now. If Caesar lived and 
fought his battles ; if Xenophon lived and 
fought and wrote his Anabasis, Jesus, the 
Christ lived, was crucified, was buried, and on 
the third day rose again, and on that rock 
this Easter morning the church militant can 
take their stand, knowing that it will not 
crumble though the oaks of the mountains 
fall and the mountains themselves decay with 
years. 

The first lesson I would have you notice 
as the fruit of the resurrection is, that it 
establishes the truth of the Christian religion. 
If Jesus be not risen then is our faith vain. 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 231 

The disciples recognized this tremendous 
fact and that is the reason they preached the 
resurrection so faithfully all their lives. 
Upon that one fact they grounded the validity 
of His claims to the Messiaship. With that 
fact before them, they preached Jesus and 
the resurrection with tremendous power and 
to the conversion of thousands of souls. 
Because of that one fact, Peter said that the 
Father had poured forth the baptism of the 
Holy Ghost upon the church, and thereby 
rendered the witnessing of the disciples 
effective. Because of this they went cheer- 
fully to martyrdom for they were always see- 
ing like Stephen, Jesus at the right hand of 
God exhalted. On no other ground except 
the truth of the resurrection of their Lord 
can you for one moment explain the subse- 
quent action of the disciples. Scattered and 
downhearted to the extreme of weakness 
before the memorable third morning ; rally- 
ing, exultant, triumphant under all circum- 
stances after, as with great power they give 
witness unto Jesus and the resurrection. On 
this Easter morning let us remember that our 
faith is as strong as the eternal hills, for 
Jesus has risen. 



232 THE SEEN FAITH, 

The second lesson I bring before you is, 
that we are serving no dead Master, but a 
living and omnipresent Lord. Where is the 
Christ now ? We go to the tomb, but we 
hear the same answer heard by certain others 
centuries ago, " He is not here ; He is risen." 
Then we remember that He said : '* I am 
with you always ;" and we read that if we 
will love Him and keep His commandments 
the P^ather will love us and that He and the 
Father will come and make their abode with 
us. Jesus is not dead. He has been dead, 
but He has risen now and His abode is in the 
heart of the church He loves. He is the 
omnipresent One now and the very air around 
us this morning is quivering with the Heavenly 
life of the Infinite One, the risen Lord. Not 
there ; not on the sea of Galilee ; not at the 
well of Sychar ; not in the ruined city of 
cities, but here with us ; and wherever we go; 
He goes as our daily Companion, our Saviour 
and Guide. Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed 
lived, taught, made disciples and died. 
Their teachings lived after them in a mar- 
velous manner. Their disciples have been 
numbered by the thousands and yet we have 
their final resting place with us. Their dust 



II 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 233 

has long years ago gone back to dust and 
their followers have a live memory, but a 
dead Lord to worship. But we can lift up 
our eyes to the hills that are everlasting and 
we can see our Master sitting on the throne 
high and lifted up. We can see Him look- 
ing to our interest and noting our wants and 
guiding us to a sure victory. He is doubly 
ours and He lives to intercede for us at the 
throne. Oh, if ours were a dead Lord ! If 
we must look back at the tomb or make 
yearly journeys to Jerusalem to get near to 
His resting place and keep alive His memory, 
it would be sorry trouble for troubled hearts ! 
No peace there ; not much comfort for sor- 
rowing ones in the tomb, if those who have 
promised to be with us and aid us lie there 
sleeping their last sleep and no voice can 
rouse them. And then if, when we come 
down to the waters of death He who has 
promised to be there for us to lean upon ; to 
be our rod and staff in the valley of the 
shadow ; if He lies in the valley Himself and 
a tomb holds Him fasj, where is the comfort 
and cheer. Oh, the dread of it with a dead 
Lord ! But thanks be to His name. He is not 
there, He has risen, and He is here a live 

15 



234 THE SEEN FAlTH. 

Christ,a living Saviour,and He is here to abide. 
The third lesson for us is, that the risen 
Lord demonstrates the reality of the life 
beyond the grave. Jesus has passed clear 
through the grave. He did not come out on 
this side of the grave. He rose supremely 
victorious over death. He did not come back 
to life to die again like the widow's son, or as 
Lazarus. He came up on the Heavenly side of 
the tomb. If He had only come back to life 
He would have demonstrated nothing but 
what had been demonstrated by one of the 
prophets centuries before Him, and that is, 
that after death it may be possible under cer- 
tain conditions, which conditions may be met 
with three or four times in the history of the 
world, for one who has died to come to life 
again, and that would be all the lesson would 
be worth. And who, after they had met death 
once and had gone into an eternal state, would 
care to come to life again, to meet again with 
life's battles, knowing that at any moment 
they might be called upon to die once more, 
and by any one of a thousand possible horri- 
ble deaths. What qf comfort would there 
have been in such a lesson as that ? And 
how meaningless Easter would have been, 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION, 235 

even if it should have been remembered for 
eighteen centuries. But Jesus rose from the 
grave to go no more that way forever, and 
coming up as He did on the eternal side, 
He stands to us as the one demonstration of 
the life beyond the grave. We have promise 
and prophecy of such a life, and an occas- 
ional visit from angels, but if Jesus had failed 
us, there would have been no demonstration, 
and all concerning the future would be a dark 
and fathomless void. But He rose, and now 
the life beyond is a certainty. He has not 
failed us here and He will not fail to come 
after us, that where He is we may be also. 
If He rose not, then there is no resurrection, 
and our faith is vain, and we are of all men 
the most miserable ; but He lives and because 
He lives I shall live also, and where He is, I 
shall go some day and reign with Him forever 
and ever. O, grave where is thy victory. 
O, death where is thy sting. 

No wonder that Easter has such a hold 
upon the world. No wonder that we hail 
with delight, the coming of this anniversary, 
year by year. We shall rise again, and rise 
to take no part in a second death. The life 
this side the grave becomes simply the vesti- 



236 THE SEEN FAITH. 

bule to the next ; only the place where we 
lay aside our wraps which have kept us from 
the storm, and prepare to enter the abode to 
live on and on and on. We shall go down 
now to the grave, but the great fear and dread 
is gone. We do not want to die, but the dread 
which must certainly have been ours, had not 
Jesus rose, is wanting. We shall go down to 
the grave and for a moment it will be dark, 
but we shall feel the arm of Jesus around us, 
and then, oh, then the sunlight of Heaven 
will burst upon us and the sun shall set no 
more. No more darkness ; no more dread to 
live for fear that something will happen the 
next moment ; no more funeral knell to fall 
upon our ear ; no more funeral procession 
winding its weary and mournful way to the 
sepulcher, reminding us that we too shall some 
day be there. All will be life, and endless life 
and peace and happiness, for He has risen. 
No wonder that Jesus and the resurrection 
was the theme of the disciples, and no won- 
der that they could think of little else, and no 
wonder that they, in their exultation went and 
sold all their earthly possessions and had all 
things in common. What need had they for 
earthly stores ? Heavenly mansions were 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION, 287 

theirs, and it was a sure possession. This 
earth was not their home. 

A fourth lesson of the resurrection is, that 
the resurrected Jesus stands as a representa- 
tion of what we shall be like after the final 
resurrection. To John on the Island of 
Patmos the risen Jesus said, '* I am he that 
liveth and was dead, and behold I live for- 
evermore, and hold the keys of death and 
hell." Do you want to know the mystery of 
the grave, look to Him and He will unlock 
that mystery for 3^ou. Do you want to know 
the mystery of the intermediate state, behold 
He has the keys. And do you want to know 
what we shall be like after the resurrection 
of the saints, go to Him ; here He has the 
keys also. Handle Him and see that He is 
not a ghost or disembodied spirit. Here is a 
tangible form of Christ which lives and talks 
with men. This body in which He lives is 
still the means of communication with the 
outer world, and so like the other forms this 
side t';ie grave that His mtimate companions 
take Him for some other man at first glance. 
But His is now a resurrected body, and as 
you look closely you will see a change. 
Before death He hid himself away from those 



238 THE SEEN FAITH. 

seeking Him in the crowd, or in the desert 
or mountain. He escapes in the darkness 
and hides His material body by other material. 
But after the resurrection there is none of 
this. He suddenly appears before the ques- 
tioning disciples, although the doors and 
windows are closed. He suddenly hides 
Himself in the air around them, and is lost 
to their material vision. He goes through 
closed doors and partitions, and at last while 
talking with the disciples, He begins to ascend 
without aid. Horses and a chariot of fire was 
sent for the prophet of old who went up 
before death, but for the resurrected body 
there is no need for the chariot of fire. The 
wish is the chariot in which the resurrected 
body is borne. We wonder how the future 
shall be and what we shall be like, when there 
is the example all worked out. Look at Him. 
We shall be like Him not only in character 
likeness, but in the essence of our outward 
form. That outward form was buried a 
natural body, it was raised a spiritual body. 
It was of the earth earthy, it came forth from 
the grave glorified and heavenly. '^ And as 
we have borne the image of the earthy, we 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly. 



, JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 239 

So when this corruptible shall have put on 
incorruption, and this mortal shall have put 
on immortality, then shall be brought to pass 
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed 
up in victory." 

A fifth, and for today a final lesson is, that 
the resurrected Lord answers the of t repeated 
question as to whether we shall recognize one 
another in Heaven. Did the disciples recog- 
nize their Lord ? Most certainly. To be 
sure Mary did not seem to know Him at first 
glance, and mistook Him for the gardener. 
But so do many in this life now fail to recog- 
nize most intimate friends when they suddenly 
put in an appearance, unexpectedly, and when 
supposed to be far away. Mary had come to 
the tomb to anoint Him and found the grave 
empty but she had no thought other than that 
He was dead and that some one had carried 
Him away for burial in some other place. 
But when He speaks the one word, " Mary," 
the tones of the voice arrest her attention and 
she looks and sees her Lord and says, *' Rab- 
boni ; which is to say, Master." Recognition 
by the disciples quickly follow, although the 
skeptic Thomas, must first needs touch his 
flesh and put his hands into the wounds for 



240 THE SEEN FAITH. 

evidence, and then he breaks out with, ^^ My 
Lord and my God." They must have recog- 
nized Him as the crucified Jesus, for of no 
fact were they more certain than that He had 
come forth from the grave. It was Jesus and 
the resurrection which characterized all their 
preaching. Because of this they were ready 
to lay down their lives in His service. 
Because of this they did lay down their lives. 
No matter how incredulous to many the 
resurrection may be, one thing is certain, 
the disciples believed it to be true, and that 
belief changed the whole current of their 
lives, and held them like a grip of steel to 
their work to the very door of death. That 
belief was founded on a recognition of Him 
after the resurrection. The very body was 
there in its identity. Even the scars made 
for them and us. 

Loved ones have gone on before us all. 
For some a father ; for others a mother, a 
sister, a brother, a son, a daughter ; for some 
a nearer and dearer one still. We sit and 
think of them in the quiet of the twilight, and 
while our whole hearts go out after them we 
wonder if we shall find them yonder, and if we 
find them shall we know them ? will they know 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 241 

us ? Can we talk together as we do here, and 
enjoy each others' company ? And often we 
say, that if we will not and if we cannot we 
do not care to go, for Heaven will not be 
Heaven without them. Think back to the 
first Easter morning, and while your mind 
asks questions about the future state, let that 
company of loving disciples gathering about 
their resurrected Friend answer you. Shall 
we recognize our friends in Heaven ? Did 
they recognize Him ? 

And now in conclusion let me say that I 
would to God, the fact of the resurrection 
might take hold of our lives as it did of 
theirs. Did you ever look for the change 
wrought by the one fact of the resurrected 
Jesus on that little band of early disciples ? 
The}^ never seemed to realize their mission in 
this world until after that. They acted like 
all other men until then. They acted like the 
majority of Christians act these days, before 
the resurrection. But when the fact came 
before them, how changed all things were. 
How changed the men who composed that 
early church. Timid, vascillating, dependent, 
half hearted before, brave to the last extrem- 
ity after ; as immovable as the everlasting 



243 THE SEEN FAITH. 

hills; as independent of surrounding circum- 
stances as was their master, and their hearts 
knew no other magnet. Oh, that the glorious 
fact of the resurrection might so take hold of 
us as to become a mighty conviction. A con- 
viction which would change the current of 
our lives as it did theirs. That would make 
us realize that this world is not our home. 
That in this life we have no continued city. 
That we are to look to the great and real life 
beyond the grave for our reward. That we 
are not laboring for the applause of men, 
or their reward. We are to wait until we 
enter Heaven's portals to hear the applause 
and the well-done. That we might so get 
enamoured of Heaven and our resurrected 
Lord, that we might become fit subjects for 
the descent of the Holy Ghost ! Listen to the 
thunder of the voice of the transformed 
Peter ; listen to the marvelous conclusion 
of His sermon on the day of Pentecost. 
*' This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we 
all are witnesses. Therefore," and this there- 
fore has been called the colossal therefore 
of history, " therefore being by the right hand 
of God exalted, and having received of the 
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. 243 

hath shed forth this, which ye now see and 
hear. Therefore let all the house of Israel 
know assuredly, that God hath made that 
same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both 
Lord and Christ." This is the colossal con- 
clusion drawn by the man who before the 
resurrection was frightened into denying his 
Lord, but who now hurls this wonderful sen- 
tence with trip-hammer vehemence at those 
who crucified Jesus. The presence of the 
Holy Ghost in the church is the accredited 
sign of the resurrection. The presence of 
the Holy Ghost in your heart is the abun- 
dant sign that you have a resurrected Lord 
and that He has you. If you have this 
sign in you and upon you, stand up on this 
Easter morning with the disciples of the 
resurrected Jesus, and confess Him both 
Lord and Christ that through you as through 
Peter, those who know Him not and have 
not this evidence in them, may be pricked to 
the heart and be saved. 

We are not all here this morning who were 
here last Easter. Some have passed on. 
Will we all be here next Easter morning? 
If not, let us strive to so live that on the last 
resurrection morn, we may rejoice with joy 
unspeakable in Jesus and the resurrection. 



A VISION OF GOD THE NEED OF 
THE TIMES. 



Text : Isaiah VI : 



" Here am I, send me." 



The vision of Isaiah which is disclosed in 
the context of our text, whether actual vis- 
ion or otherwise, it is not our purpose to 
question ; only to denote the lessons it has 
for us, for every actual vision of God, or 
soul's consciousness of God's immediate 
presence, produces similar results in those 
who are exercised thereby. Notice then the 
threefold character of these results. 

1. An immediate consciousness of the 
awful character of sin, and its utter lack of 
harmony with God and the Heavenly envi- 
ronment. 

2. After the cleansing consequent on the 
above revelation, a blessed consciousness of 
God's presence and a sensitiveness to God's 
voice. 

3. A spontaneous and joyful willingness 
to do the Father's will. 

What is the great need of our times ? This 
is an intensely practical age. An age when 



A VISIOiV OF GOD. 245 

the idea of human agency is being especially 
forced to the front. Man has attained a 
position in the mind of man in these days as 
never before. From the days of the Reforma- 
tion, the death knell of the belittling of the 
soul of man has sounded. In the days of 
the supremacy of Grecian philosophy the 
eternal good was everything, the earthly 
government next and man the lowest in the 
order of thought. Man was* made only to 
accommodate the state. The state was made 
to accommodate the eternal good. At some 
period of the future existence, man would 
cease to exist as an individual and for all 
eternity would be lost in the bosom of the 
eternal good. 

After the time of Christ and the apostles, 
the thought which received supreme atten- 
tion was the exceedingly sinfulness of sin, 
and consequently the exceeding sinfulness 
of man as the smner who could not, because 
of sin, think one pure thought or do one 
pure act, so firmly was he bound up in sin. 
The consequence was the belittling of man 
and centuries of the withdrawing of men 
into monasteries and cloisters in self abase- 
ment and seclusion to do penance for this 
awful state of sin. 



246 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Then the Grecian conception of the suprem- 
acy of the state over man, that man was 
made for the state and not the state for the 
man, entered into the church. The idea of 
the temporal rule of the church came into 
existence. The churchly government took 
first rank and man the second. The idea 
that man was made for the church and not 
that the church was made to help man into 
the image of Jesus Christ, became the idea 
of the centuries. 

Thus Grecian philosophy of itself and 
then as modified and entering into the church, 
and the current conception of sin without a 
correct conception of what the salvation of 
Jesus Christ meant in its fullness, kept man 
for centuries and centuries in the lowest 
positions, occupying subordinate rank in the 
creation of the universe ; kept him in the 
caves of the mountains and behind the doors 
of monasteries and on pillars of affliction. 
No wonder that these were dark ages. No 
wonder there was but little progress. No 
wonder the sciences and arts were practically 
forgotten, for humanity was dethroned and 
man was wallowing in the mire. 

But a man who believed in the VIII Psalm 



A VISION- OF GOD, 247 

and the IV chapter of Ephesians, as well as 
in the prophecy of Habakkuk and the Epistle 
to the Romans, came into the world in the 
fifteenth century, and declared that man was 
made but little lower than the angels. He has 
fallen in sin to be sure, but he shall live again 
purified by the blood of Jesus, through faith. 
God came to save man, he is great even in 
his ruins ; and by this salvation which is by 
faith, He will raise man again into His own 
image. Man was not made for this world's 
sake, but the world was made for man. Man 
was not made for the state, but the state is made 
for man's use. Man was not made to accom- 
modate the church, the church has been made 
as the slave of man, for no other purpose than 
to help him on his way into perfection, and the 
church militant shall abide until we all come 
in the unity of the faith and the knowledge 
of the Son of God unto the perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fullness 
of Christ. 

The chief end of man is an exhalted man- 
hood which shall equal in its moral image the 
human character of Jesus and in this chief end, 
this exalted character,he shall best glorify God 
^nd enjoy him forever. 



248 THE SEEN FAITH. 

This was the purpose of the Reformation 
and the spirit of the teachings of Martin 
Luther. Then the doors of the monastery 
and cloister swung open. Then the church 
began to take its subordinate place as the 
instrument of God and man, and not man's 
master. Then man began to take an exalted 
conception of himself and the wheels of 
progress were set in motion. 

The supremacy of the individual man, 
judged in the light of his origin, his destiny 
and what it cost to redeem him, has leveled 
kingdoms and empires since. It has estab- 
lished republics. It has emancipated slaves. 
It has made life sublime, aye beautiful, and 
the future has been lighted to splendor by 
the new hope. Man lifted his head and 
commenced to live the new life. On the 
heels of the Reformation, science and philoso- 
phy came to the front, scholarship took high 
rank ; universities and colleges were founded 
and the age of inventions, of discovery, of 
the development of the human mind dawned. 

What has been the result ? The possi- 
bilities of the human mind has been seen in 
the modern sciences, philosophies, arts and 
inventions, until man himself stands amazed 
at his own efforts and cries, what next ? 



A VISION OF GOD. 249 

Every boy sees in himself a possible Lin- 
coln, a Grant, an Agassiz, a Darwin, a Bacon, 
a Newton, an Edison, a Spurgeon, a John 
Hall, but above all a perfect man. 

This age has taken man from the dust, given 
him the wings of freedom and worth and set 
him on a throne. Consequently, this has been 
an egotistic age. Man in the lofty spirit of 
his own individual importance has in his own 
mind become as a god. He not only judges 
angels but he considers himself competent to 
judge God, question His actions and finally 
deny Him any existence at all. 

We have an idea that we can do almost 
anything and that we know jusi how it ought 
lo be done. This is quite true in church work 
and in moral reform. Only give us the right 
kind of organization, the right kind of machin- 
ery, the right man, and we can do all things, 
forgetting to add with the apostle, " through 
Christ which strengtheneth me." Conse- 
quently, this world is fast filling up with human 
theories for the redemption of the world from 
its ills. In social affairs, in affairs of the 
state, in the affairs of the church, we are glut- 
ted with theories, as our book stalls are glut- 
ted with the books which contain them. But 

i6 



250 THE SEEN FAITH. 

side by side with our theories march the fail- 
ures of life. Each theorist, each party, is 
charging the responsibility for the failure on 
some one else, because their theory has not 
been adopted. 

The empty hulks of human theories lie along 
the shores of time side by side with the frag- 
ments of the wrecked fleets. 

With what are we confronted today ? 

On the one hand the magnificent successes 
of human endeavor, the tremendous and awe 
inspiiing achievements of the human mind, 
which are grand beyond human foresight. 

On the other hand what? The terrible de- 
feats of human endeavors to solve the moral 
problems of today. The awful wrecks of 
humanity which still lie in their own rot in a 
cumulative mass at our feet ; the air filled 
with cries of despair and woe ; the land, aye, 
the world, filled with murder and blood shed 
and with devilish appliances for wrecking 
your boy and mine. 

Saloons, opium joints and houses of ill fame, 
filled this hour and contrary to law, with in- 
mates once as pure and white as the infant in 
the cradle ; hellish machines for turning 
Jekyls into Hydes and existing before the 
eyes of those elected to drive them out. 



A VISION OF GOD. 251 

We hear the mutterings of anarchy and 
socialism on the very threshold of the land of 
our adoption, or birth, whose boast is human 
supremacy. We hear the distant roar of 
battle between white and black, between capi- 
talists and laborers. We hear the cry of the 
perishing multitude of the world's poor and 
outcast. We hear the sobs of mothers, of 
wives, of children, broken-hearted through the 
demon of drink which has dragged down and 
is dragging down its hundreds of sons, of 
husbands, of fathers, every week. 

We see human theories in the form of the 
Farmers' Alliance, of the Prohibition party, of 
the Labor party, of the Democratic party, of 
the Republican party, and a dozen others with 
and without names. We see organizations 
like the W. C. T. U.,the Y. M. C. A., the Y. P. S. 
C. E., the X. Y. Z., etc., the pet organizations 
of church and society. We see all these and 
hundreds of others declaiming loudly of their 
efficacy to heal all the ills to which flesh is 
heir. 

We see men high in authority, in municipal, 
in state, in national government, those high 
and those low in office in both church and 
state, as well as the rank and file, shivering 



252 THE SEEN FAITH, 

with cowardice as they try in the midst of 
this jumble of things to walk without tread- 
ing on the forms or theories of the hundreds 
of factions into which we are suddenly split. 

What is the need of the time ? Where 
shall we look for relief ? 

Shall we dethrone man ? Shall we put him 
again in the monastery and cloister, and in 
the dust? No ! He has been there, and the 
times were worse a hundred fold than now. 
What then ? 

On the left hand are the magnificent suc- 
cesses of the achievements of mind which 
show him what he can do. Bid him God 
speed and tell him to go on and up. 

On the right hand are these colossal fail- 
ures which tell him what he cannot do. Which 
point out not only that there is a human limit- 
ation but what that limitation is, the utter 
impossibility for man with all his power to 
reform society in and of himself. That there 
must be a power over and above himself to 
save the world from sin. That with all of his 
liberty and all of his achievements and all of 
his possibilities of mind, God alone can save 
the soul from sin and thereby reform society 
and transform the world. 



1 



A VISION OF GOD. ^53 

Let man still sit on the throne made for 
him by his Creator and restored to him by 
his Redeemer, but let him understand that 
the highest expression of Heavenly wisdom 
is found in God linked to man, the God-man, 
and that it will take all there is of us linked 
to all there is of God to save us from sin and 
make us touch ultimately the image of a per- 
fect Christian. 

The need of the time for us is a new recog- 
nition of our own limitation and a correspond- 
ing recognition of the necessity of the Divine 
power to save us from our ills by saving us 
from our sins. We have had our eyes fastened 
so long on ourselves we need to look up now 
and realize that God is, that He is a factor in 
this universe, that He is around us and has 
a right to demand allegiance from us, that 
we have an account to settle with Him by- 
andby for the deeds done in the body and 
that only He can save the world from disaster 
in the moral realm. 

We need to return to the gospel plan of 
salvation and preach with new force, repent- 
ance, regeneration and sanctification of life 
by the Holy Spirit, and that power belongs 
to God. 



254 THE SEEN FAITH, 

We need to get into touch with the Divine 
life until everyone of us shall hear the Divine 
voice saying, "whom shall I send and who will 
go for us " and until we shall respond joyfully 
and quickly, " Here am I, send me." 

God pity the blind. Close your eyes and 
see how much is absolutely gone of this 
beautiful universe of God. 

But there are many kinds of blindness. 

Physical blindness. 

Intellectual blindness. 

^sthetical blindness. 

Moral blindness. 

Spiritual blindness. 

Again I say and with ten fold energy, God 
pity the blind, God pity those whose eyes are 
so blind they can not see God. 

The world has been struggling for ages to 
get one vision of God. They have impro- 
vised many things to take His place in their 
desire to see Him. But no man hath seen 
God at any time, in His fullness, with the 
physical organs of sense. 

But there is more than one way to get a 
vision of God. We can all have a soul 
vision of the Infinite, a consciousness of 
His presence and of a personal communion 
with Him. 



A VISION OF GOD. 255 

It was a declaration of the Scriptures cen- 
turies ago that God is very near us if we 
would only look for Him, for in Him we live 
and in Him we move and in Him we have our 
being. That is the last declaration of science 
and philosophy too. Pick up the latest deliv- 
erance of science or of philosophy and what 
is the thought that permeates it ? None 
other than this declaration of Holy Writ. 

It is time we had our eyes open to the 
fact. It is time we come to realize that God 
is not there, but here. It is time we had our 
eyes opened to the spiritual world around us 
and its reality ; these spiritual things which 
are spiritually discerned. 

Again, we say the need of the time is a 
God vision. Why ? To supply what we can 
never give. To complement our limitations. 

1. By quickening our consciences and by 
teaching us what sin is and that sin is not in 
harmony with God. 

2. That we may become conscious of His 
presence and listen to His voice. 

3. That we may serve Him with our 
means, our lives, our loves, spontaneously, 
and joyfully, no matter what the hardship, 
no matter what the cost. 



256 THE SEEN FAITH, 

God give us a vision of Thyself, today, for 
Thou art the complete answer to the world's 
ills. The need of the hour is that we get 
back in touch with Him. 

God is near you ; open your eyes that you 
may see Him. Stretch out your hand that 
you may touch Him. Come to Him that He 
may touch you and that you may be healed. 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 

Text: Rev. XI : 17. "We give thee thanks, O Lord, God 
Almighty, which art and wast and art to come ; because thou 
hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned." 

At the crisis of the world's history, a shaft 
of sunlight fell straight from Heaven. Sun- 
light incarnate in earth's fabric, that those 
who sat in the region of darkness might not 
be blinded by its brightness. Incarnate, that, 
like the prism, its incarnation might reveal 
its seven-fold sp'endor. How that light 
brought out of its dull outline this world of 
creation ! How it unfolded the purposes of 
that creation ! How its lightning flash brought 
to view the blooming flowers of Eden, the 
roses of God's love ! 

Yet it came unto its own and its own received 
it not. It did not comprehend it. It would 
not comprehend it. It ^' loved darkness rather 
than light, because its deeds were evil." But 
it was comprehended. Heaven understood 
it. The orchestra of the world of light gath- 
ered round the place whose darkness it first 
penetrated. They lift their harps of gold. 
Their lips are parted in song. The earth's 



2o8 THE SEEN FAITH. 

atmosphere trembles. Heaven and the shep- 
herds Hsten. Hark to the refrain : ** Glory 
to God in the highest ; and on earth peace, 
good will toward men." 

What did the earth think of the music ? 
Why was there no response ? Why was not 
the refrain caught up here, '' Glory to God in 
the highest and on earth peace, good will 
toward men?" If Heaven's orchestra could 
have been augmented by earth's chorus, if 
men could have joined the angels in one 
grand anthem of- rejoicing, there would have 
been music sufficient to have charmed the 
very imps of darkness, and to have awakened 
responsive echoes in the very outposts of 
the universe. But, no ; earth had no ear for 
such melodies ; no vocal organs with which 
to swell such an anthem ; no soul-sensitive- 
ness to such Divine harmony ; dead to 
heaven ; deaf to its melodies ; blind to its 
light ; deaf to God's offers of peace ; blind 
to the revelation of God in Jesus the Christ. 

But through the centuries there comes to 
us this Easter day another sight of Heaven ; 
another revelation From the lonely isle of 
Patmos we hear another outburst of music. 
We catch another glimpse of an orchestra of 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 259 

Heaven. It is a larger orchestra this time. 
Earth has joined Heaven at last. 

From the prophetic vision, we seethe angel 
with one foot on the sea and one on the land 
commanding time to lay down his hour-glass. 
Eternity with all its glory has dawned. The 
unaccountable millions of earth which once 
rejected the Christ, are now rejoicing in His 
light. Of this scene says the revelator, '^ I be- 
held and lo, a great multitude which no man 
could number, of all nations and kindreds and 
peoples and tongues, stood before the throne 
and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and 
palms in their hands ; and cried with a loud 
voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sit- 
teth upon the throne and unto the Lamb." 

And now earth and Heaven join in the re 
frain. Together they sing the new song. 
Hear you not the eternal harmonies sweeping 
down to us this day from that white robed 
throng ? Feel you not its power ? Listen to its 
theme : '' The kingdoms of this world are be- 
come the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ 
and He shall reign forever and ever." *^ And 
the four and twenty elders which sit before 
God on their seats, fall upon their faces 
and worship God, saying, we give thee thanks, 



2m THE SEEN FAITH. 

O Lord, God Almighty, which art and wast 
and art to come, because thou hast taken to 
thee great power and hast reigned." 

When our Lord was crucified, it looked to 
men and angels as though His mission was, 
after all. a failure and the cause for which He 
lived, a lost one. When He rose from the 
dead, then they understood its purpose and 
its power and those who had looked for His 
reappearing, commenced this eternal thanks- 
giving. It shall have no end. It is set to 
eternal harmonies which shall never die. 
This new song, this prophetic vision ; this 
union of Earth's and Heaven's orchestra, 
should have new significance to us this glad 
Easter morning, itself, not only a commem- 
oration, but also a prophecy. Some of our 
pews have been vacated here in the last few 
years to augment Heaven's chorus. The 
orchestral leader yonder has discovered some 
from Calvary church. He desired to add to 
that triumphant throng of singers. He has 
called them. They have said to us good-bye. 
They have received the Heavenly welcome. 
They have said good-night here ; good-morn- 
ing there. They have exchanged the trials, 
the darkness, the loneliness, the cares of this 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY, 261 

earth for Heaven's glory. The company of 
the mortal and imperfect, for the immortal 
and perfect. Ours is the loss, theirs the gain. 
As in fancy we can see them yonder and can 
hear them in that immortal chorus, with the 
golden harps and sanctified voices, we do 
not wish them back. We are impatient in 
our loneliness to pass on and rest with them 
with our work finished. 

This is our Easter hope and resurrection 
promise. But we have not been called yet. 
Our work is not yet finished. We must not 
be impatient. But for our comfort, with our 
eyes on the new Heaven and our ears filled 
with the new song, and our hearts full of 
Heaven's love, standing here between the 
two songs, let us contemplate what evidences 
there are at hand that the chorus of the text 
shall some day be realized, Jesus' reign be- 
come universal, and we who are His, become 
members of that throng of singers. 

(i). That His reign has increased in the 
face of the sternest opposition, evidences its 
ultimate victory. 

At the dawn of the Christian church, when 
the high priest and all which were with him 
rose up and laid hands on the apostles and 



262 THE SEEISr FAITH, 

took counsel to slay them, one, Gamaliel, had 
in reputation among all people, said, ^' Ye 
men of Israel take heed to yourselves what 
you do as touching these men, for if this 
counsel or this work be of men, it will come 
to naught, but if it be of God ye can not 
overthrow it." Applying this standard to the 
teachings and the work of these men, what 
must be the verdict ? The mustard seed has 
become the tree and the birds of all climes 
are lodging in its branches. But this success 
has not been achieved with even the negative 
help which the policy of Gamaliel would 
have given, but ui the face of the sternest 
opposition. His policy was not adopted and 
Christianity has come to success, in spite of 
the sternest opposition it is possible for any 
thing to receive from the inventive genius of. 
men or devils. Had Gamaliel added, but if 
you do not let these men alone, but drive 
them out of our city and put some of them 
to death and persecute the others beyond 
measure ; then if success crowns them, that 
success must be of God, even the high priest 
must have admitted that it would have been 
strong testimony, to say the least. Such 
has been the case. Never has opposition 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 263 

been more determined. The reign of Jesus 
has advanced against a storm of stones, 
through the cells of prisons, through conflicts 
on sea and on land, through fields of blood 
and furnaces of fire. The stately trampings 
of its legions have been heard mingling with 
the jeers of the Roman mob. And when no 
opposition of force could avail to stay it, 
scorn and ridicule, argument ?nd oppositely 
constructed religions were pitted against it. 
It may safely be said that human muscle and 
human mind centuries ago, exhausted them- 
selves in the fight against the faith, but to no 
purpose. Through all, and in all, and over 
all, it has been victorious and that without 
weapons that are carnal. Jesus said to Peter, 
*^Put up thy sword," and the sheathed sword 
and the uplifted cross have been its signs of 
conquest ever since. 

But not alone has it advanced against the 
opposition of its foes without, it has advanced 
in face of a greater enemy, dissention and 
disunion without its own borders. That His 
reign has been augmented through the cen- 
turies over the weaknesses and mistakes and 
brother hatreds in its own body, is its greatest 
miracle ; its triumph is greater because '^ The 



264 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Thirty Years War '' has been within its own 
ranks. 

Therefore, we say that opposition of every 
character save that of time,has been exhausted. 
It can meet no greater in the future. It has 
triumphed. Can we not say that it will be 
ultimately victorious ? 

(2). That advanced science, philosophy 
and discovery confirms its claims, evidences 
its ultimate victory. 

Science and religion is the statement today. 
Not science or religion. Science has as its 
field the tangible, material world, its ground 
the intellect. Religion has as its field the 
spiritual world, its ground the heart. Over 
both is the one and the same God. God has 
given to the world two books of revelation ; 
each a revelation of himself ; the one the 
complement of the other. Centuries ago from 
his pulpit of wood, Ezra, the servant of the 
Lord turned the leaves of the one Book and 
reading it gave the sense. Today from pul- 
pits of wood and stone and dust, other ser- 
vants of God are turning the leaves of the 
other book and giving the sense. The book 
of geology as the Genesis of the newest Bible. 
The book of philosophy as Exodus. The 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 265 

book of astronomy as Leviticus. Botany and 
astronomy as the poetry. The science of 
biology and mental and moral philosophy 
as the books of prophecy. Psychology would 
hint to us the need of a Saviour, while the 
history of the church would give us the 
gospels and the epistles. 

Science and theology are not pitted against 
each other, but each is becoming more and 
more the book of answers for the other. 
There they verify their results. The great 
mass of scientists are today to be found 
within the pale of the church. In the last 
congress of scientists which met at Phila- 
delphia, seventy per cent, were to be found 
members of the orthodox church, and ninety 
per cent, were in sympathy with the Christian 
religion. More and more are we coming to 
realize that the priests of God are not all to be 
found in the house of Levi, but also of the 
tribes of Galileo and Newton, of Beal and 
Agassiz, of Miller and Dawson, and that the 
two books of Nature and the Bible are but 
two testaments of the one Book of God. 

But not alone are science and philosophy 
verifying Scripture and testifying to its trust- 
worthiness, but discovery in the fields of 

17 



266 THE SEEN FAITH, 

Egypt and Assyria and Palestine, is testifying 
to the historical truths of the Old Testament. 
The day when the infidel could deny the his- 
tory of Israel, as given in the Scriptures, is 
fast passing away. For not alone are the 
telescope, the microscope, the hammer, and 
the scalpel enlisted in the service of the Mas- 
ter, but the spade as if ashamed of doing 
nothing but digging graves for men, is dig- 
ging the grave of infidelity by uncovering 
the ruins of Nineveh, the tomb of Jonah and 
the monuments of the kings. It is grand to 
live in these days of victory. Science, philos- 
ophy and discovery are adding their voices to 
those of the Heavenly chorus and are testify- 
ing that the kingdoms of this world are rap- 
idly becoming the kingdom of our Lord and 
His Christ. 

(3). That in the light of the advanced 
civilization of the nineteenth century, it meets 
the deepest demands of the heart and is 
abreast with and above all civilization, evi- 
dences its ultimate victory. The demands of 
the heart are always the same in all ages and 
in all climes. 

The psalmist thirsting after God as the 
hart for the water brooks, is a sure type of 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 267 

man. The heart longing for sympathy in the 
earliest ages, is the heart longing for sympa- 
thy today. The religion of Jesus is purely 
a religion of the heart and not of the head. 
The fruits of the Spirit in the days of Paul 
were love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
ness, goodness, faith, meekness and temper- 
ance. Not an attribute of the head in all 
this catalogue of the Spirit's fruitage. The 
fruits of the Spirit when the morning stars 
sang together, are the fruits of the Spirit 
today ; but the heart is apt to be deceived in 
the choice of that which will best meet the 
demands of its longings. Therefore, while 
the heart in its longings has been ever the 
same, the centuries have witnessed a change 
in those objects meant to satisfy. Whatever 
gives to the heart an abiding satisfaction will 
be the victorious power of time and eternity. 
It is for the head to investigate these objects 
and test them, but the heart will reject the 
best intellectually tested objects, if it fails to 
satisfy. Experience is, after all, the best and 
only sure test of the heart. And, therefore, 
as the heart of the civilization of the nine- 
teenth century chooses Christianity as its best 
comforter, and that after an experience of 



268 THE SEEN FAITH. 

eighteen centuries, it is a sure and lasting tes- 
timony to the final absolute reign of Christ. 
But while the reign of Christ is the genius 
of heart's ease in this advanced civilization, 
it is also abreast and above that civilization 
in its intellectual strength and the leader of 
the highest intellectual culture. That the 
Christian religion is pre-eminently the heart 
religion, has led to the sometime error that it 
is weak in intellectual strength. That it pre- 
eminently satisfies the longing heart is its best 
argument for its pre-eminent strength of in- 
tellect. It is not only the concentrated love 
but the concentrated wisdom of Heaven. 
That wisdom and that love has been lifting 
civilization and emancipating it from the do- 
minion of ignorance, while it has cultivated 
the heart. Says Emelio Castelar, that eminent 
orator of Spain, '* Each great cycle of history, 
traversed by civilization has emancipated 
some one of the human faculties. The Renais- 
sance gave new life to the sensibilities and 
the imagination. The Reformation emancipa- 
ted man's moral faculties, especially the con- 
science. The triumph of philosophy emanci- 
pated the reason, while such republics as the 
United States and France are emancipating 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 269 

the will." Is it too much to say, that in this 
emancipation Christianity has been the prime 
mover, the supporter, the teacher ? Such eman- 
cipation has given man himself as his own 
inheritance. It must take some time for him 
to learn by experience and observation that 
human liberty means loving, loyal obedience 
to Divine law. But he will learn it though it 
does take time. Emancipated from the thrall- 
dom of the past, though every link of the chain 
which bound him was forged by man, under 
the direction of God to serve a limited pur- 
pose, now worn out serving its purpose, drops 
into God's furnace to be melted over and it 
will come out a new chain by which man will 
be lifted from earth to heaven. 

(4). Fourthly and finally, that, after eigh- 
teen centuries of strenuous conflict, it has 
lost none of its vitality, but has increased 
from strength to strength, evidences its final 
victory. Why does the tree live ? Wh}^ does 
it ultimately die ? Scientists tell us that the 
answer to the one is the answer to the other. 
When you have solved that problem you 
have also solved the relation of life and 
death to man and to governments. These 
problems of life and death are the same 



270 THE SEEN FAITH. 

throughout the universe. Death marches 
side by side with hfe. From the moment 
the seed germ is aroused to activity death 
begins its work. Growth continues as long 
as the tree has sufficient vital force to 
more than counterbalance the decay. The 
time comes when the vital force is not suffi- 
cient. Death then has the ascendency and 
dissolution is only a question of time. As 
with the tree, so with the physical man. As 
with man, so with governments. The decay 
of every government is only a question of 
time. As you remember history, you can 
recall the overthrow of the governments of 
Alexander, of Caesar, of Napoleon. These 
powers existed as long as there was sufficient 
vital force to counterbalance the processes 
of decay. But with the vitality of Alexander, 
of Caesar, of Napoleon absent, the decay 
was rapid and certain. There were none of 
sufficient vital force to take their place. In 
the race of life and death, death has won in 
every contest but one. No wonder that the 
traveler goes out in search of that fountain 
of vital force which shall prove a perpetual 
and sufficient source of life to counteract the 
processes of decay and thus conquer death. 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 2'?! 

There has been one exception to this pro- 
cess of decay. There is one government 
which nineteen centuries has tested and the 
fountain of whose vitality is as full as at the 
beginning. It is the government of Jesus. 
In the face of every negative force that has 
been the heritage of every other government 
and the cause of its overthrow, this govern- 
ment has gone on from strength to strength. 
Why ? There is but one answer. It is fully 
embodied in the meaning of this Easter day. 
The Founder of this government did not will 
to His subjects the final conflict between life 
and death like other founders. He met death 
at the beginning. He conquered him in his 
stronghold the grave. Therefore He has 
only willed life to His subjects. He has given 
to them by the power of the resurrection His 
omnipotent, omnipresent Self as a sufficient 
vital energy to rejuvenate His kingdom and 
furnish the antidote to death. His living 
Self overcomes the processes of dissolution. 
His, *' Lo, I am with you alway," is the watch- 
word of sure growth and the challenge to all 
doubters. By His presence the youthfulness 
of His government is renewed like the eagles. 
It shall run and not get weary ; it shall walk 



272 THE SEEN FAITH, 

and not faint. Alexander, Caesar and Napo- 
leon are dead. We point to their tombs and 
say, lo ! they are there and therefore their 
governments are dead, too ! But on this 
Easter morning we point to the tomb of Jesus- 
and we hear again the voice of the angel 
saying, He is not there, He is risen. There- 
fore of His government there shall be no end. 
History warrants this conclusion. Several 
times in eighteen centuries has it seemed as 
though His government was beginning to 
wane. The darkest time in its history was 
when Jesus was on the cross. Who then 
would have dared to have said that after the 
centuries had gone by, the millions of an 
advanced civilization would commemorate 
not only that scene but the one of three days 
later, the resurrection. Even after the ascen- 
sion when only the few were gathered in an 
upper room in prayer, who of the kingdom of 
the Jews, would have prophesied that which 
was about to take place. It seemed to the 
leaders who had put Jesus to death that at last 
they had accomplished their purposes. The 
would hear no more of this matter. Chris- 
tianity was extinguished. But suddenly there 
is a sound heard as of a mighty rushing wind. 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 273 

The Holy Spirit descends, and at the end of 
the first day there are thousands at Jerusalem 
who are ready to die for the faith. The work 
goes on. The kingdom spreads faster and 
faster, and farther and farther, in spite of all 
opposition, until in a very brief time the 
whole civilized world has its converts, and 
thousands upon thousands are singing praises 
to the risen Lord. Let infidelity take warning. 
After centuries of wonderful prosperity 
again it seemed as though the kingdom of 
our Lord would become dissolved by very 
virtue of its temporal prosperity. The 
church had become a wonderful corruption 
of what it should have been. It seemed to 
have lost its power. To one who had for- 
gotten that the Lord was not in the tomb 
and who was looking at the outward sem- 
blance of things only and not to the Foun- 
tain of perpetual energy, Christianity was 
proving itself a failure. But lo, just when it 
seemed as though the devil was being victo- 
rious over the risen Lord, again is the sound 
heard from Heaven, the Reformation is 
ushered in, the kingdom of Jesus is again 
cleansed of its filth and rottenness, and a 
new life is assured. 



274 THE SEEN FAITH, 

So later on, when the Lord raised up John 
and Charles Wesley, just at the point when 
infidelity in all its forms was about to cele- 
brate its triumph over the kingdom and its 
leaders had prophesied its immediate collapse, 
the kingdom receives new life from on high 
and goes on to greater strength. The reju- 
venating power of the Holy Spirit, the omni- 
present Witness of the risen Lord, has never 
failed the kingdom in its extremity. After 
every new impulse the kingdom advances 
beyond every point of its previous history. 
Let infidelity take notice. We are subjects 
of a living King. 

These days of ours may be called properly 
days of great unrest in the theological realm. 
Historic doctrine is undergoing great discus- 
sion. Scepticism has taken to itself new 
forms. It was forced to do this for many of 
its positions in regard to Christianity it has 
been farced to give up. Thank God there 
are many victories vvhich have been won for 
the faith which will never have to be won 
again. But the scepticism of today is of a 
most subtle sort. It admits the practical 
helpfulness of Christianity, but does not 
accept its promises. But what is to be the 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 275 

outcome of this theologic unrest, the subtle 
attacks of scepticism, the omnipresent doubt ? 
Dissolution of the kingdom ? The uncrown- 
ing of our King ? No, never ! If every 
person of this age should forsake His 
standard with the exception of a half dozen 
we^k and infirm ones of poor intellect, but 
large heart and faith, through these there 
would come a new Pentecost, a new advance 
of the kingdom, a new conquering of the 
earth, a new love for Jesus, a holier faith. 
There need be no doubt as to the future of 
the kingdom, the future of the Book, nor the 
ultimate reign of our King. Our Lord is 
risen indeed, and as the omnipresent Spirit, 
He becomes the greatest surety of the ulti- 
mate victory of His kingdom. 

Brethren, the signs of the times assure us 
of the ultimate victory of Jesus the Christ 
and His eternal reign. We have listened to 
these few facts of evidence not because we 
have doubts on the subject, but that we may ' 
by this reminder have new confidence in the 
ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy of our 
text. This victory in its rapid and near 
approach should bring cause for rejoicing to 
every Christian heart. As Christians we can 
be thankful under all circumstances. 



276 THE SEEN FAITH. 

If Jesus triumphs all things must work 
together for our good. We can come from 
the chamber of sickness, from the grave of 
our dead, from fields of disaster,and while tears 
fill our eyes, we can let the songs of rejoic- 
ing go up from our lips as we catch sight 
through the open Heavens of Christ on the 
throne 

Yes, the Lord reigns ! Let the earth rejoice ! 
To be sure clouds and darkness are round 
about Him ; the clouds and darkness of His 
oft-time strange providences ; the darkness 
which our understanding can not fathom, as 
we weary the heavens with our oft-repeated 
question of "why." Yet, above our sorrow 
and distress, above disaster and pain, above 
all our bewilderments, above the impenetrable 
darkness of time's night and the clouds of 
its day, be assured that righteousness and 
judgment are the habitation of His throne. 

Therefore, *' although the fig tree shall not 
blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ; 
the labour of the olive shall fail and the fields 
yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off from 
the fold, and there shall be no herd in the 
stall ; yet we will rejoice in the Lord and 
joy in the God of our salvation/' 



THE ULTIMATE VICTORY. 277 

Brethren, listen again to the song of the 
redeemed ! Listen to the final Easter chorus ! 
Every tribe and tongue and nation and every 
family, too, are represented. Jesus is there. 
The kings and priests are there ; the white 
robed throng, angel and seraphim, sons of 
God. Our loved ones are among the throng. 
Will we be there? Let us join the orchestra 
of light. Let us now send back the refrain, 
Glory to God in the highest ; and on earth 
peace, good will toward Heaven. Let us 
join these Heavenly voices of thanksgiving, 
as the echoes come up to us from the Isle of 
Patmos, for He who is and was and is to 
come has taken to Himself great power and 
has reigned. 



i^/2^f 



